


The bad days are needed to make the good days seem good

by Bumblie_Bee



Series: The bad days are needed to make the good days seem good [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, But it is dear evan hansen so what were you expecting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Evan injures more than his arm, Friendship, Gen, Help, Hurt/Comfort, I predicted 13 originally, Like, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicide Attempts, Panic Attacks, So much angst though, Whump, hahahahaha that went well, so like, take that with a pinch of salt, things I can't do include predict chapter counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2020-11-15 13:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 131,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20866763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblie_Bee/pseuds/Bumblie_Bee
Summary: Evan's high until he isn't. Connor's high until he finds a reason to sober up.In which a fall happens, more than one life is saved, and an understanding is born between two broken boys.





	1. Falling in a Forest

Evan hadn’t intended to climb the tree.

Or, well, no, that wasn’t quite true; he had intended to climb the tree, but only to spend his lunch break amongst the leaves as he so often did. It wasn’t unusual for him to eat his sandwiches perched on a low-lying branch with his back against the trunk. He enjoyed longing there, feeling the warm air on his skin and watching bees dance in the green, dappled sunlight filtering through the leaves above as he ate. The birds would chirp, and the leaves would rustle in an August breeze that smelt like fresh pine and sometimes the sweet summer rain that occasionally fell overnight. It was peaceful up the tree. It was good.

There were never people this far from the path either, no one to attempt pointless conversation for conversations sake, the sort that would make his hands sweat and his words stutter as his anxious brain searched for a reply he wouldn’t later regret. The trees never questioned him, though, so there was never anything to say nor anything regret. Trees just existed, peaceful and unworried, and so, for the little while he would spend sat amongst the branches, Evan could be peaceful and unworried too.

What he hadn’t entirely intended to do, though, was to climb quite so high, but it seemed, for some reason, he had.

The day so far had not been good. His mom had gone to work early, leaving before he was awake and before he could remind her that she’d promised to drop him off at work on her way to the hospital, and as a result, he’d had to take the bus to the park which had made him late, and he hated being late both because he then had to apologise and explain why and because it disappointed Head Ranger Jack. Then, instead of his usual, blessedly isolated duties, he’d spent the morning explaining to visitors why the path on the far south of the park was closed, ‘a half-fallen tree’ he’d stuttered about a hundred times, and then, when his lunch break had arrived, he remembered had no lunch to eat because he hadn’t had the time to make any. There was a café on site, so he could have bought some, in theory, but in practice, he was already a sweaty, stammering mess who was definitely not in the right headspace for more social interaction.

And so, he’d walked to his normal tree, his aching stomach growling angrily because it had been a good 24 hours since he had eaten last, and habitually pulled himself up onto his branch. He’d sat there a moment, frowned up at the branches overhead and the sun peeking through the canopy far above, and then, on a whim, started up the tree once again. 

His hands had been sure and steady as he pulled himself higher and higher, and although the branches had thinned as he’d climbed, he knew which were safe to hold. The signs of weakness obvious to his experienced eyes. Trees were his area of expertise; the one subject he might admit he was good at. If one can be good at trees, that is. He did know a lot about them though. He knew that that pines were the only sort that grew from a cone, for instance, and that the cones themselves were either male or female. He was good at keeping them alive, too, well, plants in general, really, he was green fingered, his mother said, and, most relevant at the moment, he supposed, he knew how to climb them.

He’d been climbing them since he was tall enough to reach the lowest branch of the small apple tree in their garden, and although at first it had worried his mom to come home and find him scaling their garden, he’d never once fallen.

The ground had grown distant as he pulled himself towards the canopy, arms pleasantly burning and calloused fingers sure and strong on the rough bark, and his faded backpack had grown progressively smaller until he’d reached the topmost branch he knew wouldn’t bend and buckle and snap beneath his weight.

Panting a little from the effort, he’d settled down on the branch he knew was higher than was sensible, ended up sitting with his legs dangling and one hand still on the trunk for balance. He’d been tired and sweaty, for once his moss green shirt sticking unpleasantly to his back in a socially acceptable ‘too hot after hard work in August’ kind of way rather than an anxious mess having a breakdown kind of way, and he’d been calm despite the extensive distance between his swinging feet and the scorched grass below.

Curiously, he’d shuffled further out onto the branch, cautiously pushing himself away from the trunk, until he was perched sideways on the thinning branch, his calloused fingers gripping the young bark and his legs hanging over air. It was kind of a precarious position to be sat in so high up, he decided numbly as he swung a walking boot over the distant ground. It would be all too easy for him to fall, to lean a little too far forwards or backwards, to slip off the branch, for the wood beneath him to bend and snap and send him falling to the cracked ground far below. It was a fall that would probably kill him. Or, well, it would lead to a landing that probably would anyway.

And yet, despite knowing it should, he found his life hanging so precariously in the balance didn’t bother him. What would happen would happen. If he fell, he fell.

He’d swung a leg thoughtfully, enjoying the gentle creak of the branch and the warm air lapping at his shin through the thin khakis. Would it even matter if he did fall? It wasn’t as if anyone would miss him; he didn’t have anyone to notice he was even missing. Or, well, that wasn’t entirely true, his mom would miss him, eventually, when enough money collected in the jar on the kitchen counter for her to decide to comment on his lack of dinner again, and he knew she would be sad when she did. How could she not be, he was her son?

But, despite her sadness, he knew a part of her would also be relieved. He was a burden to her, after all. She wouldn’t have to work so much if she didn’t have him to feed and clothe and medicate and educate in the years to come. She wouldn’t have to worry about him as he knew she often did, worry about making sure he was okay, about making him better. About fixing him.

She’d be better off without him, eventually, even if she would be sad for a little while first. 

Evan glanced down at the ground. He swung his legs again, watching bland grey contrast the yellowed green below.

He took his hands from the branch, not intending to fall, but more because it wouldn’t exactly matter if he did. He was teasing fate, he knew, tempting something to happen, playing with his life in a way that could never be considered healthy, and so, it was kind of ironic that it was then that the branch he was sat on creaked miserably.

Then groaned.

Then cracked.

And then gravity surged.

There was a moment of freefall before he found the branch below, his chest colliding painfully with the wood as it halted his decent. The rough bark grazed the soft skin on his bare upper arms as he struggled to hold on.

For a second, he’d panicked, because it very suddenly seemed an awfully long way to fall and he started to pull himself up onto the branch. He was strong enough to, physically, even if he didn’t look it, but then, as he was hanging there with his life quite literally in his hands, his racing thoughts had stumbled to places he tried not to let them, places that reminded he was alone and unwanted and a burden, and he’s calloused hands paused on the branch.

His thoughts had slowed.

He’d glanced down at the scorched grass, blurry with distance below his boots.

It wasn’t as far away as it had been before, but still, it was quite a distance. It would be quite a fall.

He’d wondered how long it would take.

He’d wondered if it would be far enough.

He’d thought it was.

He’d _hoped_ it was.

His always racing thoughts had been idle. He’d felt peaceful, calm, for once in control.

The silent seconds had slowly passed, and his arms had grown tired, just as he was tired.

An early leaf fell.

He’d watched it land.

Closed his eyes.

Drawn in one last, shuddering breath.

He’d let go.

Evan wakes to pain and confusion and the tickle of dry grass on his cheek.

For a long, disorientated moment, he doesn’t know where he is or what has happened, only that everything hurts more than he can remember anything ever hurting before. It hurts so much he can’t even work out what is hurting let alone find the focus to worry about anything else. But then, as those first awful seconds tick silently by, he grows accustomed to the pain a little and his sluggish, muddled mind is able to function just enough for the memories to slowly stutter into place. And then he remembers what has happened.

And he remembers what he tried to do.

And, somehow, that hurts more than anything else, both because he has failed, just as he fails at everything because that’s what he is, a failure, but also because he tried to kill himself, and that’s…

Evan feels sick because whilst he knew he was a mess, that his thoughts hadn’t been healthy for a while now, he hadn’t thought they were _that_ bad, and he didn’t think he would ever have the strength to do anything about them even if they were. But it turns out they were, and turns out he did, and although he hates himself for what he tried to do, he still isn’t quite sure if he’s relieved that he seems to have survived the fall or not. On one hand it would be so much easier if he hadn’t, he’s so tired of life and tired of thinking he’s wasting a life he doesn’t want to have, and he tired of being a burden to his mom, and he’s tired of being alone, and on the other, well, he isn’t really sure what’s on the other hand, and the longer he thinks about it, the more he realises he might have made the right decision all along.

Except, he hasn’t. Because he didn’t die.

Instead he woke alone on the scorched grass of the forest in more pain than he knew he could be in.

He’s awake enough that can feel where it hurts now, and he really wishes he wasn’t. His head throbs awfully, enough that he wonders if he’s got some sort of head injury, it would explain his meandering, muddled thoughts too, and his stomach still aches, and his back is raw, and his arm is numb, or, no, not numb because it definitely hurts too, it’s more like his muddled brain can’t quite process the signals his overwhelmed nerves are sending.

He’s worked out he’s laying somewhere between his front and his side, too, and he thinks that might be important but he can’t quite remember why, with his face turned down towards the grass, the dry blades tickling his cheek and the warm scent of earth mixed with the sickening tang of iron ripe in his nose. His arm, the one that’s becoming less and less numb with every passing second, is caught awkwardly beneath him, trapped between his aching chest and the hardened ground below.

Slowly, he realises it kind of makes sense his arm hurts, because he thinks he remembers instinctively put out his hands to stop his head being what ended his rapid descent from the branches of the beautiful old oak he was once amongst. He wonders if its broken. His arm, not the oak. He hopes it isn’t, though, because his mom would have to pay for a hospital visit and a cast and she really hasn’t the money right now. She’s already working extra shifts to pay for a new boiler and they need a new boiler because otherwise they won’t have heating for the winter, and they need the heating because if it’s cold in the house they’ll probably both end up ill and then she won’t be able to work and then they won’t be able to pay the rent and they’ll get evicted and end up homeless and die on the streets and all because Evan was an idiot who fell out a tree and maybe broke his arm.

Or not fell, exactly.

The possibly broken arm hurts a lot now that he’s thinking about it, more than anything else does and he decides maybe not laying in will help and so he tries to pull it out from under himself and, _fuck_, does that turn out to be a mistake because agony, white hot and furious, replaces the kind of numbness that hadn’t really been numbness at all.

His aching, muddled mind reals at the pain and everything spins and nausea surges violently in his gut, and he finds himself vomiting onto the parched earth beside him. And that’s why he knew it was good he’s lying on his side, because choking to death on his own vomit is not the way he wants to go. He coughs out a sob and draws in a shuddering, wet, cry of a breath because it hurts hurts hurts and that’s all his muddled mind can understand. His arm is burning and his head throbs and his heart aches because he’s lying alone on the grass, injured and in pain and he doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t think he’d be able to get up get help, he’s so dizzy he doesn’t think he could sit let alone stand and walk, and no one is going to come looking for him because no one will even notice he’s missing until the money mounts up in the jar on the kitchen counter, and that means he’s probably be going to die alone and in pain on the forest floor.

He lets out a sob, because although that was what he planned before, he isn’t all that sure it’s what he really wants now.

Somewhere in the back of his muddled, racing mind Evan realises he’s forgotten how to breathe, and he tries to inhale but the iron air catches in his tight throat and he isn’t quite sure if that’s just because he’s panicking because he’s good at panicking or if it’s because he’s more seriously injured than he had realised, and that doesn’t help at all.

His heart is pounding wildly in his chest, and his thundering thoughts are racing, too. His throbbing head is agonizingly slow and so, so muddled, and he’s nauseous from the pain and dizzy despite knowing he’s still and everything hurts so much and he’s going to die alone, and his chest hurts too, and he still can’t _breathe._

The spinning, yellow grass blurs and darkens, and then the rapid thrumming of his heart in his ears fades too, and even the pain in his arm and his back and his head pale into nothingness compared to the wild panic throbbing in his chest because he still can’t breathe, he can’t _breathe_, he can’t-

When Evan wakes again he feels calmer, and he isn’t quite sure if that’s a good thing or not. The pain is duller too, almost distant, which he definitely isn’t going to complain about, but his thoughts are somehow more sluggish than they were before and so very muddled, and thinking is an awful effort.

He blinks open bleary eyes to find he’s still on the forest floor, although, he isn’t sure why he thought wouldn’t he be, and after a moment, he decides he should probably do something to help himself. It isn’t like anyone else is going to help him; no one will notice he’s missing for a while and he doesn’t really want to spend that while laying alone on the prickly grass. It isn’t overly comfortable, and he still hurts. And he’s getting cold.

Why is he cold?

It’s August.

He decides it doesn’t matter all that much, maybe the weather changed whilst he was unconscious, and what does matter is getting help. He doesn’t think he can walk back to the centre; it isn’t exactly close and he’s so very tired and still dizzy enough that he feels like he’s spinning even though he isn’t, and he isn’t all that sure his muddled brain can remember the way back despite it being a path he has followed countless times in the past month and countless times before that too.

He could phone for help, though, he realises, or text, actually, because he hates the phone, text someone to come and get him, his mom, maybe, and take him home because he’d like to be at home, in his bed, where it’s warm and soft and familiar and where he can sleep. Although, thinking about it, he knows it’s more likely he’ll be going to the hospital than home because he’s pretty sure he’s got a broken arm and maybe a concussion, but that’s okay too because they have drugs there, painkillers, and they sound nice. Almost nicer than his bed does.

His phone is in his bag though, and that’s… where is his bag? It’s under the tree somewhere he knows, but he can’t see it from where he’s lying, and he needs to see it to get to it, so he forces himself to sit.

He regrets sitting the moment he’s upright because pain flares hotly in his arm and his back protests and his head throbs and spins and nausea threatens again. He swallows thickly and closes his eyes against the spinning and begs himself not to throw up or pass out again. Not that passing out would be all bad. Nothing hurt when he wasn’t conscious. 

He doesn’t pass out though, somehow, and eventually the spinning slows a little and he blinks open heavy eyes and looks around to find his blurry, black backpack sitting on the yellowed grass a little way towards the trunk of the tree. It really isn’t far away but he’s hurting and tired and dizzy and the short distance might as well be a marathon. It’s a marathon he’s going to have to complete though. It’s either that or freeze to death in a forest.

Evan chokes a heavy sigh, and then starts towards his backpack. Pain burns in his arm and back and head and stomach, and he doesn’t really remember much more than that, than the pain, so he isn’t quite sure how he makes it to his backpack, but, somehow, eventually, he does.

Well, he does kind of know; he shuffled on his bum, propelling himself with his feet and one working arm. The other lays in his lap, looking more than a little not right. It burns angrily enough to bring hot tears to his eyes and leave a tang of blood on his tongue from where he’s bitten into his lip to keep himself from yelling.

Not that it would matter if he had yelled, he realises; it isn’t like there is anyone around to hear. 

He makes it though, that’s the important part, and it takes so much more effort than anything he can remember doing before. The phone in the front pocket of his bag where he left it, and eventually he gets it unlocked, thankful for the unreliable fingerprint scanner on the back that takes at least three attempts to work pretty much every time, because he can’t seem to quite get his eyes to focus on the too dull screen and his fingers are shaking too much to type in the code even if he could see where to type it. He kind of gives up on the idea of texting then.

He finds his mom’s contact, because that’s who will help him, his mom, his mom will come and get him, and then the phone in his hand is dialling and on loudspeaker, he thinks, because the cheap, tinny speakers sound awfully loud in the quiet of the forest. The call rings, and rings, and rings, and then his mom is speaking, saying ‘hello’, but she doesn’t stop to let him talk, to ask why he’s called, she just keeps speaking. She doesn’t even sound like she’s speaking to him, her tone is much more formal, much less disappointed, and it’s then that he realises he’s right in thinking she isn’t speaking to him, not exactly, because she’s actually speaking to anyone who has called as the call has gone to answer phone.

Evan’s expression crumples.

She hasn’t answered.

She hasn’t answered when he needed her to, when he’d counted on her to be there to help him.

He belatedly realises he should have expected little else, and a broken sob bubbles from his chest. 

The tears feel hot against his cold skin.

He drops the phone to the grass because what else can he do with it, there’s no one else for him to call, no one else who even pretends to care for him. Well, maybe except Jared, because his parents won’t pay for his car insurance if he doesn’t, but Jared wouldn’t come out to a forest to find him, Evan knows that, it’s too much effort for a family friend and he’s at summer camp anyway, so he couldn’t help even if he wanted to.

So, anyway, Evan knows no one is coming.

He’s injured and alone and he doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t think there is anything he can do.

He thinks he’s probably going to end up dying alone and in pain in the forest after all.

A sudden overwhelming ache of loneliness mixes with the pain in his head and arm and back and then he’s properly crying, his heart breaking and his tears hot and hopeless. The sobbing is making his head throb and the dizziness worse, and then everything’s spinning much too much and he loses what little balance he has and ends up laying on the grass beside the fallen leaves and twigs and acorns once again. He curls up as much as he can and closes his eyes against the spinning grass and allows himself to cry because he’s so very alone and because he really doesn’t feel very well at all.

He’s hurting and dizzy and awfully tired, and his thoughts are so slow and muddled even thinking is such an effort. And his stomach hurts, which he still doesn’t understand.

Tears leak from his closed eyes, forming salty trails sideways across his face.

His breathing stutters wetly in his too tight chest.

Time ticks silently by, and then, eventually, as exhaustion settles in and his thoughts slow and the panic is forced to fade, his sobs quieten, and a hollow calmness envelops him.

Resignation follows.

Because maybe he will die alone in a forest, but if he does, maybe that’s okay, because only his mom will care, and she’ll be better off without him eventually, he knows so. He worked it all out earlier when he was hanging from the branch of the beautiful oak he is laying under. So, maybe, it doesn’t matter if he’s dying. It’d be better if he did.

So, he concludes, it doesn’t really matter if he’s alone and dying in a forest, it doesn’t matter if no one is going to come and save him. He doesn’t need anyone to. He doesn’t want anyone to.

Evan sniffles, and sighs, and reaches up to rub away the last of his tears. It takes such an effort. He’s so very tired.

He’s almost too tired to stay awake, he realises, and everything hurts so much, his head and his arm and his back and his heart, and it didn’t when he was unconscious before, so maybe he should just give in and sleep.

Distantly, he knows he probably shouldn’t; he really, honestly, thinks he might be dying, and if he falls asleep, he doesn’t quite know if he’ll wake up again or not.

But then, that was his plan, wasn’t it? So why does it matter if he doesn’t. No one would care if he didn’t.

Evan’s heart hurts, and he hurts, and he’s so very, very tired.

He thinks he’s probably dying.

He knows he is alone.

He makes a decision, lets out a breath, and allows himself to drift.


	2. And There's Somebody Around

Evan’s bed is shaking when he wakes, and he groans because it _hurt_s. At first, he doesn’t understand why his bed is shaking, and he doesn’t understand why he hurts, but then, as he rouses a little more and his aching brain slowly restarts, he realises his bed isn’t shaking; it’s him that’s shaking.

Or, actually, no, he’s_ being_ shaken, actually, but why, he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know what has happened either.

Or where he is, because he isn’t in his bed; he’s lying on grass, he thinks. He can smell its sweetness and feel its tickle against his cheek.

The shaking continues, and he knows that hurts, that he hurts, like, really hurts, and he thinks a groan might have slipped from his bitten lips.

Or a sob, maybe.

And then, unexpectedly, someone is calling his name.

He doesn’t understand that either.

Confused, he forces his leaden eyes to flutter open, and at first, it’s just blurry and green with streaks of brown and grey but then, as his vision focuses a little, he realises he isn’t alone.

That there’s a boy beside him.

Well, as much of a boy as he is.

The boy is kind of hard to see, both because Evan’s eyes still don’t really want to focus and because the glow of the sun filtering through the leaves above is painfully bright and almost directly behind him. It’s shining around the edges of his head like a halo.

Evan blinks at it.

The boy says something, and Evan can hear his rough, unsure voice, but the sounds don’t form into words for his muddled brain and all he can do is frown in reply. A moment passes. The boy shifts a little as though uncomfortable. Whether he intended to move out of the way of the sun or not, Evan doesn’t know, but without the brightness shining from directly behind his head, Evan can then see he’s frowning, too. Through blurry eyes, he surveys his saviour, takes in his thin stature and pale skin and the dark brown hair falling in haphazard, loose waves, and his wide, strikingly blue eyes.

Or, no, a strikingly blue _eye_ Evan realises, because only one eye is blue. The other is half blue and half brown.

How odd, he thinks.

It’s odd that they’re worried too. 

“Evan?”

Evan frowns, wondering why the boy with mismatched eyes and a halo made of sunlight know his name, but before he has time to really consider the question, the boy is talking to him again. He can’t really understand what is being said, but he can tell the tone is urgent. He doesn’t understand that either, although he doesn’t really try to because he’s tired and hurting and his thoughts are slow and muddled. It’s as though someone has mixed honey and golden syrup and treacle into a sludgy, sticky mess and then stirred it around inside his head.

He tries to sit instead, thinking that maybe he’ll feel better once he’s up and deciding he doesn’t really like being looked down on by the boy with worried eyes anyway, but it turns out that moving _hurts_, like really hurts, and he can’t help the pained cry that escapes his lips. 

“No, don’t move.” The boy’s tone is urgent again and suddenly there are hands on his shoulder, firm but gentle. They’re holding him still, he realises.

There are more words, and he thinks he might have heard his name again, but he doesn’t really know because the voice is warped and distant again, the little clarity it had regained stolen by pain. He lets out a shaky sort of groan in reply, capable of little else, and then there’s a frustrated sounding sigh just as the kind hands vanish from his shoulder.

They’re gentle when they start patting him down too, and it’s confusing and a maybe he should find it a little concerning, but Evan’s muddled, sluggish brain really can’t find the effort to care. Even if he did, he knows hasn’t the energy to push them away.

To push _him_ away.

The boy with multicoloured eyes.

Confused and hurting, and starting to feel more than a little sick, Evan closes his eyes again. He doesn’t want to deal with it anymore, not the pain or the nausea, and he doesn’t want to look at the hazy, spinning form of the boy sitting in front of a blurred background of green. He’s too tired for that. Too exhausted. His head rolls back into the grass

and then the boy is yelling at him, the words urgent on his chapped lips, and Evan forces his leaden eyes to flutter open, frowning blearily.

“Don’t sleep,” commands the boy. His striking eyes are pinched with concern.

_Why?_ Evan wants to ask, but the boy has already returned his attention to his trousers. He’s wondering if he should be worried again when suddenly the boy’s eyes widen and his hands leave, and he reaches down to Evan’s stomach and pulls something out from under him. 

He sits back, the object clasped in shaking hands.

“What’s the code?”

Evan blinks.

“What?” he asks, or tries to ask, because the sound doesn’t form as he expects it to, catching in his dry throat and stumbling over his heavy tongue. He isn’t really sure ‘what’ was what he wanted to ask either, but his thoughts are such a mess he can barely remember his own name.

He does remember his own name though, it’s Evan. Evan Hansen.

Except, it isn’t really, is it?

His name is Mark, just like his dad. Evan is his middle name, but his mom didn’t like that, so she swapped them around.

Changed his name.

Improved it like she’s always trying to improve him.

There’s a hand shaking his shoulder again and he blinks open eyes he doesn’t remember closing.

The boy is talking to him again and then he’s looking at him expectantly, as though he’s waiting for an answer.

Evan frowns.

“My name’s not Evan,” he says after a moment, and it can’t be the answer the boy was expecting because he frowns too, confused and concerned and a little frustrated, which makes sense really because Evan has just told him his name isn’t Evan and he’s gone by Evan for as long as he can remember. He’s still busy agonising over the fact that the boy probably now thinks he enough of a mess that he’s incapable of remembering his own name, when he leans forwards and he takes Evan’s arm in his.

No, not his arm. He takes his hand, and Evan wonders what on earth is happening as the boy separates his index finger from the others and holds it to the green, squarish object grasped in his pale fingers.

The nails of them are painted black, Evan realises.

It suits him.

That they’re chipped and kind of worn suits him too.

He’s dragged back from his thoughts by the upbeat ding of the phone, because it’s a phone, he realises, held in those painted fingers as it unlocks.

It’s his phone, to be exact.

He recognises the case; it has little cartoon cacti on.

But what he still doesn’t understand, is what Connor could possibly want with his cheap, off brand phone.

_Connor_.

The boy was mismatched eyes and a sunshine halo is Connor.

He’s Zoe’s brother.

And they go to school together; they were in the same English class last year. And History. And art.

They were in the same class in second grade, too, when Connor threw a printer at Mrs G. because he didn’t get to be the line leader that day.

None of that explains why he’s here now, though, and very suddenly, Evan realises he kind of wants to know.

“Connor?”

Connor looks up at his name, his hands paused around the phone. He appears surprised, but whether because Evan is capable of remembering his name when moments ago he seemed not to know his own, or because he knew it at all, he isn’t really sure.

A second passes and then his expression shifts and, suddenly, he looks a little uncomfortable.

He swallows and says, “I’m phoning for help, just stay with me okay?” his voice rough.

Evan frowns, wondering why he looks so nervous and why he’s calling for help and why he’s there at all. He doesn’t understand. He blinks heavily

and then, very suddenly, Connor’s hand is on his shoulder again and the phone is on the grass. It’s on loudspeaker, judging by the volume of the voice coming from the cheap, tinny speakers.

There’s a lady speaking, and then there isn’t, and Connor’s voice takes its place.

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s awake again,” he says, to the person on the phone, Evan assumes, and it’s then that he wonders who it is.

He kind of wants to ask.

He hasn’t the energy.

The lady on the phone says something, and then Connor laughs roughly but he doesn’t sound amused.

“Broken’s a fucking understatement.”

Blearily, Evan wonders if he’s talking about him.

It’s true after all; he’s broken enough to jump from a tree.

Because, yeah, he remembers that now.

He knows what’s happened.

And he knows enough of a failure that he can’t even do that right.

But, looking at Connor, that might not be right because although he is broken, and he accepts that, and it makes _him_ feel sick, the almost greenish tone that has taken over Connor’s skin makes little sense. Connor swallows and then, “It’s… sort of bent sideways, and there’s bone sticking out. I mean… _fuck_…”

His voice is shaking.

So is his hand when he runs it through his hair.

And Evan’s kind of a little relieved at that because at least it isn’t him that Connor thinks is broken, what he had said would make no sense at all if it was.

Not that much makes sense at the moment.

He’s too tired to even try to make sense of it all.

Maybe he should sleep.

Everything might make more sense in the morning.

He closes his bleary eyes and sleeps.

“-can’t sleep. For fucks sake, Hansen, wake up!”

Evan’s shaken back into consciousness to find someone leaning over him, one of their thin hands on his shoulder.

“Hansen?”

The person shakes him again and he groans involuntarily because although the shaking is gentle, it hurts all the same. Although, he thinks he would probably hurt whether they were shaking him or not. He fell out of a tree after all, he remembers that.

Another shake, and Evan forces his leaden eyes to flutter open.

“’m awake?” he protests weakly, and he tries to roll away from the figure because they’re still leaning over him, their hand still shaking his shoulder. Only, he finds he can’t roll away half because he’s much too tired, and half because suddenly the hand on his shoulder is firm. It holds him still. He hasn’t the strength to even try to fight it.

“No, don’t move,” a voice says urgently.

It takes Evan much longer than it should to realise it’s Connor who had spoken and Connor’s hand heavy on his shoulder, which does make sense when he thinks about it, because it was Connor who had found him after he fell from the tree, and Connor who’d stayed and phoned for help. It’s Connor calling to him now, Evan’s name urgent on his lips.

Reluctantly, Evan opens heavy eyes he doesn’t remember closing and blinks them into focusing. It kind of works; the forest that surrounds them is a blur of green and brown, but Connor is at least clear enough that Evan can see his pale, worried expression and concerned, mismatched eyes.

“You with me?”

He sounds concerned too.

Evan doesn’t know how to feel about that.

He nods anyway.

Connor’s hand shifts to his chin, stilling his head and Evan mutters a protest and tries to move away but the hand won’t let him.

“Seriously, stay still. They’re worried about your neck,” Connor explains, tone urgent, and Evan frowns wondering who would be worried about his neck.

Also, why his neck? Because although he kind of knows why they’re worried out his neck, he did fall an awfully long way after all, his neck doesn’t hurt.

His head does hurt though.

And his arm.

And his back feels raw.

And his stomach aches, which is a little odd.

Why _does_ his stomach ache?

“Because you’re hurt, you fell out of a tree.”

Evan nods, at first, or tries to because Connor’s hand is still gently holding his chin, because that makes sense, but then he stops, and frowns because… because Connor isn’t really right.

Not that he isn’t hurt, he knows he is because being hurt _hurts_, but rather because he didn’t fall from the tree.

He kind of… let go. 

“What do you mean you let go?”

Evan blinks, slowly processing Connor’s words.

He almost cries when he realises what Connor has said, and what he must have said, too. He doesn’t remember speaking, but, apparently, he has.

Connor is looking at him with puzzled eyes, and he closes his own, half because he really, really does not want to have this conversation, and half because he’s tired and hurting and his head is spinning and aching, and he feels really quite sick. He thinks most of the nausea stems from his aching stomach, but some of it is psychological, grown from the fear that Connor now knows what he tried to do. He will probably tell the paramedics, and they’ll tell the doctors at the hospital, and they’ll tell his mom, and then she’ll know what a broken mess he has become. She’ll hate him for it, for what he tried to do.

For climbing the tallest tree in Ellison State Park, and crawling out on to a branch he knew wasn’t strong enough to support his weight, a branch that had cracked and broken and left him hanging from the branch below, physically strong enough to pull himself back up but mentally-

“Evan!”

Evan opens his eyes again, tries to blink Connor into focus with limited success. Connor is frowning at him and he doesn’t understand that either.

“You can’t sleep, okay?

Evan blinks, letting his sluggish mind process what Connor has said.

No moving.

No sleeping.

“’s complicated.”

His words are slurred enough that even he has trouble understanding what he has said, but Connor must have because he breathes a weak, almost humourless laugh.

“Jesus Christ, Hansen.”

A moment passes, and then Connor is looking at him with those pinched, mismatched eyes again. They’re heavy with concern, they have been for a while, but now accompanying the understandable concern is a look of pity that wasn’t there before. Evan hates that it’s now there; it pretty much confirms that Connor knows what it was he tried to do.

Although, did he try to do anything, or did he just not do anything to stop it?

He isn’t entirely sure.

The branch did break, after all.

There’s a pause and Evan wonders what would happen if he did sleep more, but then Connor is speaking again, and he blinks him back into focus.

It’s annoyingly difficult.

“-meant to keep you talking until the ambulance gets here,” Connor is telling him, expression tight and tone serious again, edged with nerves.

Evan doesn’t think he’s seen Connor Murphy nervous before.

Maybe finding a dying mess of a classmate is enough to do that even to the most well held together of types.

Although, is Connor well held together?

Evan doesn’t know.

It’s hard to tell, sometimes, he knows that much.

But Conner is still sitting there, the statement hanging, and so Evan hums in response.

Connor frowns. Bites his lip. He looks like he’s trying to puzzle something out. A second passes, and then his features relax just a little.

“So, erm, you said your name wasn’t Evan,” he tries, and Evan at least can work out what to reply to that. Connor will be pleased.

“’s Mark.”

“But you go by Evan.”

He isn’t sure if it’s a question or a statement.

He isn’t sure if Connor knows either.

He’s just trying to keep him talking because that’s what he has been told to do and so, out of politeness, Evan hums again. He’s too tired to actually say anything but maybe that counts. Speaking is much more of an effort than it ought to be.

So is thinking.

So is staying awake.

He wonders why.

“Why?” Conner wonders. Presses. Evan almost can’t be bothered to answer, it’s a lot of effort. He’d rather sleep. Except. Except, Connor has told him not to, hasn’t he? So maybe he shouldn’t sleep. Maybe…

Connor gives him a gentle shake and he blinks open blurry eyes again.

“What?” he asks, because … what were they talking about?

“Why Evan?”

It takes Evan a second to understand what he’s asking. It is a confusing question though; ‘why Evan?’, not ‘why, Evan?’. The comma is important. Or lack of, he guesses.

Connor shakes him again, annoyingly persistent.

“My dad’s Mark,” he explains slowly, eventually, not quite sure if it explains much at all. Connor seems to understand what he’s saying, though, because he nods.

“Oh, fuck, yeah, that’d be confusing.”

Or not, it turns out.

Evan shakes his head.

A hand stills him again.

“Why ‘no’?”

A beat passes, not because Evan’s drifting off again, but rather because he’s somewhat reluctant to admit to the classmate who’s sat beside him as he dies on the forest floor why it isn’t at all confusing for him and his father to share a name.

Connor doesn’t seem to realise this because he shakes him again.

Evan sighs weakly. Averts his eyes from the mismatched pair above.

“He left,” he admits, unwillingly.

“Oh, fuck. Sorry, that’s shit.” The words are surprisingly apologetic, soft and sincere and not at all what Evan had expected from Connor Murphy, the boy who threw a printer in second grade.

Evan agrees with him, though. It is shit being the kid whose parent couldn’t even bear to stick around. It makes him seem more of a loser than he already is. He hums noncommittally, because what is there to say, and then shivers softly, cold despite the August weather. He closes his eyes against the wave of pain the tremors bring.

Connor prods him into opening them again, expression concerned.

“You okay, there?”

Evan tries to nod, an unspoken lie.

Connor’s frown remains but he doesn’t argue.

An awkward beat passes.

Evan wonders if Connor is trying to think of something to say.

He blinks heavily and then Connor is shaking him again, calling his name.

“Hey, don’t sleep, remember.”

Evan grimaces, opens bleary eyes. Connor is staring at him, biting his lip. His mismatched eyes are concerned. 

Another beat.

Then, “So erm, what’s your favourite TV show?” he asks, awkwardly, and Evan knows he doesn’t really care, he’s just trying to keep him talking because he’s been told to do so by the voice on the phone. He probably doesn’t really want to talk to him at all, he reasons, and that’s kind of okay because Evan doesn’t really want to talk to Connor either. He hasn’t the energy. He shrugs instead.

Then he shivers again, more violently this time, and the movement hurts his head, jolts his mess of an arm. His stomach twinges angrily in protest and he thinks he might have groaned. Whimpered, maybe. Connor’s going to think he’s a right wimp. He’d probably care if he wasn’t trying not to pass out from the pain.

“Hey, Evan? You okay?” Connor’s voice is soft. Concerned. It cuts through the aching.

Evan forces open his eyes. He finds them wet, slow to focus. His eyelashes are sticky.

“Shit, sorry, that was fucking dumb,” Connor mutters, grimacing, and Evan, despite himself, coughs out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

Connor bites his lip, frowning. He looks concerned and Evan swallows his tears.

“No, it’s … I’m okay,” he tells him, voice pinched in pain, and then it’s Connor’s turn to laugh. It’s a humourless sound.

“Yeah, and I’m not high.” He’s rolling his eyes.

Evan frowns, at first because it takes his sluggish mind a moment to realise what Connor is implying, but then because he hadn’t noticed Connor was high. He’s really not feeling very well at all, though, and he’s pretty sure he might be concussed or something, so maybe shouldn’t be too hard on himself for missing it. Although, he’s not all that sure he’d have noticed if he wasn’t concussed; it isn’t like he often speaks to people who are high. It isn’t like he often speaks to people at all, for that matter.

“Evan?”

He looks up again, finds multicoloured eyes which do look a little bloodshot now he’s thinking about it, and then wonders why Connor is high in the middle of the forest. Wonders if he does it often. Wonders if Connor is annoyed with him for ruining his high, too. He probably is.

“You don’t have to stay,” Evan tells him, because if Connor wants to go and enjoy the high how he intended to before he stumbled across the mess Evan had made of himself, then that’s okay with him.

Connor frowns, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“I know.”

Evan forces an attempt at a smile. Nods.

Connor stills his head. 

“Enjoy your… smoking drugs,” he says, and that doesn’t sound quite right, but he thinks Connor will understand. “Thank you, for….” He trails off, unsure of what he’s thanking Connor for, and then after a pause, Connor is speaking again.

“I’m not fucking leaving?” The disbelief is heavy in his tone and Evan frowns up at him with tired eyes. He doesn’t understand.

“You’re not?”

“Course not, that’d be a really fucking shitty thing to do.” Connor pauses, and then his tone softens. “Besides, I need to keep you talking. I don’t want you passing out and not waking up, you know. So, favourite TV show?”

Evan processes what has been said, and then his heart does a funny little leap when he finally realises Connor isn’t leaving him. Although he doesn’t quite understand why, he can’t help the funny little bubble of hope that has built in his chest.

He isn’t alone, after all. That’s… something, at least.

“Evan!” Conner calls again, “Favourite show, you’ve got to have one, right?”

Despite the happy tremoring of his heart, Evan sighs; he’s tired and hasn’t the energy to explain he doesn’t really watch much telly and they don’t have cable or Netflix, anyway, so he couldn’t exactly watch anything overly exciting even if he wanted to.

Connor prods him gently, and too tired to answer, Evan shrugs.

“’s yours?” he asks, fluttering leaden eyelids open. Connor doesn’t focus properly even when he blinks, but he doesn’t protest his answerless answer either.

He shrugs instead, too.

“I don’t really watch TV. I um… I like to read more, I guess.” He looks a little embarrassed. Evan wonders if he’s worrying it’s ruining his hard reputation. He smiles encouragingly. Or tries to anyway. It’s a little hard. 

“Reading’s good.”

“Yeah,” Connor agrees softly, and then after a beat, he swallows. “I’m re-reading Harry Potter at the moment, currently on the sixth one.” He sounds a little awkward. “I know it’s a kid’s book but, well…. Have you read them?”

Evan nods because he has, many times. He’d been a big fan of the books when he was little, and he still likes to read them when he’s down or overly anxious and in need of familiarity. They’re the only set of books he’s ever bought, because although buying them took a lot of his allowance for a good half a year, he knew there was only so many times he could borrow them from the library before the librarian would start to think him odd. He liked having them there whenever he wanted to read them, too.

“So, erm, do you know your Hogwarts house?” Connor asks, and behind the obvious main objective of keeping him awake, there’s maybe a little curiosity behind the question too.

Evan does, of course, a lot of people his age do. He’s done tests online many a time, and then again on Pottermore when it re-launched, but he’s tired, and hurting, and he’s starting to feel awfully nauseous, so he nods again despite it not really being one of the four answers Connor probably wants. 

Connor sighs in semi-mock frustration and cups his chin again.

“You’re meant to be talking and not moving and you’re fucking up both, you know,” he says, and there’s a nervous lightness in his tone and a forced smirk on his lips. His eyes don’t lose their frown, though.

Evan swallows his nausea.

“Sorry,” he mutters breathily.

Connor frowns a little. “Why are you sorry?”

Evan shrugs instead of answering, too tired to explain that he’s an anxious mess and couldn’t help but apologise when criticized, despite having heard the shaky teasing in Connor’s voice.

A pause follows, one that’s not quite uncomfortable, more like Connor is trying to work out what to say to get Evan talking again, before another shiver finds him. He’s ready for the pain it brings this time but that doesn’t really make it any better. It doesn’t make it hurt any less. Being ready doesn’t make it any better that he’s shivering in August either.

“Evan?”

“I’m okay,” he comforts through bitten lips despite not being okay at all. Another shiver passes, and after the pain abates, he tries to curl up a little more against the chill. His aching stomach protests.

There’s a pause and then, “Are you cold?” Connor’s tone is soft and a little confused. Concerned too, maybe.

Evan considers lying, then nods into the grass.

“Do you have a hoodie?”

He shakes his head and then Connor’s hand is back on his cheek.

“Stop that,” he mutters, before the gentle hand is gone again. A second passes and then there’s the sound of a zip, and the rustle of fabric, and a rattle he knows he should be able to place but can’t, before something soft is draped over him.

He opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing to realise it must be Connor’s hoodie he’s been covered with, because Connor is no longer clad in grey. He’s wearing a dark chequered shirt with the sleeves rolled up instead. Evan thinks he should protest because Connor looks uncomfortable without it, his unnaturally pale, sort of patterned arms crossed defensively over his chest, but he’s awfully cold and there’s warmth in the fabric from where it has been pressed against Connor’s skin.

“Thanks,” he murmurs instead, and Connor nods and then licks his lips. Evan wonders if he’s trying to think of something to say. A moment passes. The hoodie is warm and soft and fights a little of the chill. Evan’s almost comfortable. He blinks heavily

and then Connor is shaking him again.

“-don’t sleep. You’re not allowed to sleep.”

“Sorry.”

Connor frowns.

“You apologise a lot.”

Evan knows he does; ‘sorry’ is just his automatic response now days.

His mom used to tell him he had nothing to be sorry for, but she isn’t around enough to notice how much he says it any more. 

Evan wishes she was.

Connor shakes him again, and Evan blinks open eyes he didn’t close.

“She didn’t answer.”

“Who didn’t?” Connor asks, eyebrows furrowed.

He looks confused and Evan understands why; his thoughts aren’t exactly making sense at the moment, and he knows what he’s saying isn’t all that much better. 

“Mom.”

“Oh.” There’s realisation in his tone. “Maybe she just didn’t hear her cell.”

It’s meant to be comforting, Evan knows, Connor’s saying she’s not ignoring him, just busy and away from her phone, but it still stings a little because it’s true. She is busy. Too busy to notice him.

She always is.

He wonders how long it would take her to notice if he had died alone on the forest floor.

He wonders how long it would take for _anyon_e to notice if he died alone on the forest floor.

Or, not alone, it turns out, because Connor is with him now. He’s still pretty sure he is dying though; he knows his heart is certainly not beating at a rate he would consider normal, now that he’s thinking about it. It’s much too fast. Fluttering almost. He can feel it thrumming in his throat.

“You’re not dying,” Connor protests, frowning, and Evan blinks and stops focusing on his racing heart. “Like, your arm is fucked, and you’re probably concussed or some shit but you’re not dying, okay?” The shaky words are oddly harsh, and Evan kind of wonders who Connor is trying to convince. “Besides, someone would definitely notice if you did.”

Evan straightens his thoughts and then shakes his head against Connor’s hand. 

“Mom’s never home,” he explains tiredly. “And no one else cares.”

“Oh.” Connor’s tone has saddened, softened again. He doesn’t protest Evan’s statement of loneliness though, and Evan almost wishes he had. There’s a pause that’s almost awkward, and then, cautiously, “That wasn’t why you did it, was it?”

Evan’s bleary eyes catch sad, mismatched ones for a fraction of a second before he shakes his head. Connor is kind of right, but he doesn’t really want to explain. He doesn’t want to think about that either, about what he has done. His heart aches at the thought.

“She’s going to hate me.” The words come out choked.

“What?”

“Because of what I’ve done.”

Connor’s head is tilted in question and his brow is furrowed, and Evan realises maybe he isn’t making all that much sense. Maybe Connor doesn’t understand what he is referring to.

“I let go,” he explains. Admits. His heart breaks.

A moment passes, Connor’s expression is conflicted. Pained, almost. Then he sighs.

“I think she’ll just be pleased you’re okay,” he tells him slowly, as though he’s put actual thought into the puzzle. “She’s your mom, she loves you.”

Evan disagrees. He huffs a sob and rolls his head into the grass but says nothing; he’s much too tired to argue any more. He closes his eyes. Listens to the birds and the breeze playing in the leaves and his rapidly racing pulse. Tries to ignore the cold and the headache and his throbbing arm and the agony building in his stomach and the uncomfortable fluttering of his heart.

A beat passes before Connor speaks again. “I’m sorry you felt that bad. It sucks,” he says, tone a little awkward. There’s feeling behind the words though. Sympathy.

Understanding.

And that’s… that’s not good, Evan sluggishly realises. His bleary mind flits back to the scars on Connor’s pale arms. On his wrists.

His heart aches, and it isn’t just to do with his own failure anymore.

“Are you… okay?”

Connor averts his eyes when Evan’s flutter reluctantly open to meet them. He looks furious, and with himself, Evan slowly realises. Maybe he hadn’t realised the significance of what he had said. Maybe he hadn’t realised Evan was awake enough to understand. Evan kind of hadn’t realised he was either. Maybe it was just important.

Connor shrugs jerkily. Shoulders suddenly tense. Defensive. He scoffs a laugh. “I’m mean, I’m not dying on the floor a fucking forest because I jumped out of a tree, so, you know, could be worse.”

Evan flinches because that punch landed hard, stung just like it was meant to. He swallows the hurt, though, because this suddenly isn’t about him anymore. Despite his good intentions, he really doesn’t know what to reply, and he’s not sure he’d be able to work it out even if he wasn’t dying on the floor of a fucking forest.

He’s saved again by Connor.

“Shit. Shit, sorry.” He runs a hand through his matted hair. “That was a really fucking shitty thing to say.”

“It’s okay,” Evan comforts, even though it isn’t. The words had hurt, but Connor’s hurting too, he understands that now, and that’s what’s more important. Maybe. He isn’t all that sure, but he’s sure he’s dying, and Connor isn’t so... 

“No, it isn’t,” Connor agrees, tone suddenly resigned. “It was shitty.” He barks a bitter laugh. “Which makes sense really because I’m a fucking shitty person.”

“You’re not,” Evan protests breathily. He wishes he could think of something more encouraging to say but it’s all he’s capable of coming up with. It’s getting very difficult to focus on anything much other than the growing throb in his stomach.

Connor scoffs lightly, anger dissipated as quickly as it had come.

“How could you possibly know that?”

Evan fixes tired eyes on Connor. Wills them to focus. They don’t. He can see Connor is frowning though, expression pained, eyes achingly hopeless. They shouldn’t be hopeless, though, because Connor shouldn’t be hopeless. He isn’t a lost cause, and Evan knows so because although he has seen Connors shitty side at school and heard it in his brutal words only moments ago, he’s seen kindness too.

Connor stopped when he found him, stayed, called an ambulance, gave him the soft grey hoodie that is doing less and less against the cold with every minute. Connor stayed, and that’s … not something a shitty person would do. Evan knows so. Connor needs to too. 

“Because you stayed,” he breathes, and he wishes his words weren’t so slurred. They’re hard to understand, and Connor needs to understand. He wishes he could say more too, explain properly, but he’s starting to think staying awake might be a losing battle. Not that that matters.

Evan lets his gaze find Connor again. Their eyes meet for a second, mismatched holding bleary hazel before Connor looks away. He swallows.

A beat passes.

“My family hate me.”

Evan frowns at the statement, but before he can really consider what has been said, Connor is talking again.

“Which is understandable because I’m fucking awful to them, and like, Fucking Larry deserves it, he’s a shitty father, but mom tries, she’s useless, but she tries, and Zoe…” he pauses. His voice tightens. “We used to be close, like, really close, but then well, I don’t know. I fucked it up.

“She hates me now, and we argue like, all the time. And I get angry, you know? Actually, fuck, no, you wouldn’t know. But I get angry and, well, she has a lock on her door for a reason. It’s… I’ve fucked up. _I’m_ fucked up.”

He sighs, sounding angry and frustrated, and Evan’s frown deepens as he tries and fails to think of something comforting to say.

Moments later, he finds himself struggling to focus on Connor’s words again, because Connor is still talking, about Zoe, Evan thinks, about being a shitty brother and a shitty son, but he isn’t all that sure anymore.

He wants to listen, but his body wants to sleep. 

Connor says something about bleeding in the bathroom, and Zoe screaming and an ambulance. He says something about not making that mistake again, about being alone, and although Evan realises both the conversation and Connor’s mental health are far from good and very important, he’s so, so tired, and he can’t really help drifting in and out of the conversation.

He thinks he might have slept for a bit too long, at one point, because very suddenly Connor’s tone shifts.

“Fuck, I’m meant to be keeping you awake, not using you as a therapist,” he snaps, and although the vulnerability is gone from his tone, it still shakes slightly.

It’s true, but Evan doesn’t care.

“‘s okay, ‘m listening,” he slurs stubbornly, half because it is okay, Connor needs to talk, and half because he’s struggling to find the energy to focus his muddled thoughts into sentences, anyway. He’s struggling to find the energy to do anything now. Even breathing is an effort. Even breathing hurts.

He doesn’t think it’s a good sign.

“Evan? Come on, look at me.”

Evan blinks open salty lashes he doesn’t remember closing and catches pinched mismatched eyes. They’re concerned again, the pain from moments before forgotten. Was it moment’s ago? Evan’s not all that sure. Time doesn’t seem all that linear any more.

“That’s it. No sleeping, remember?” Connor’s shaky voice is firm, draws him back, and Evan nods because he does remember, how can he not when Connor has said it so many, many times, but not sleeping really isn’t that easy. He’s so awfully tired, and everything makes so little sense. He’s dizzy, and nauseous, too, and his head is pounding awfully, and arm burns angrily and there’s an agony inside him throbbing along with the rapid pulse of his heart.

It thrums weakly in his chest, fluttering against his ribs like a bird in a cage.

“My heart’s going too fast,” he finds himself saying, voice breathy and slurred and tight with pain and worry. A second passes, and then Connor frowns and his spidery fingers curl awkwardly around Evan’s wrist. The tips of the index and middle ones come to rest on the soft underside in an way that would probably be awkward if Evan wasn’t so focused on the racing beat in his chest and the throb in his stomach.

Connor’s focused on something else too, his brow furrowed over mismatched eyes distant with concentration. His breath is held.

Evan’s whistles rapidly through parted lips.

The fingers shuffle. Another moment passes, and then Connor swears shakily.

“Shit, yeah. Fuck. That’s really fast.” He runs a shaking hand through his hair. “Just, stay calm. It’ll be okay, yeah?” He bites at his lip again and he looks so scared that Evan’s sure he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. He doesn’t believe at all it’s going to be okay at all.

“You’re an awful liar,” Evan wheezes in between shallow breaths.

Connor blinks and then forces a shrug. He’s aiming for nonchalance, but his voice is still shaking when he speaks. 

“You’re not any better,” he says, and he’s right; Evan is an awful liar too. He’s nervous enough when he isn’t lying.

Before he can decide whether to agree or not, another shiver catches, one born from a chill that still plagues him despite the August sun and the soft grey hoodie draped over his shuddering shoulders. Just as he knew it would, the shiver hurts, and his eyes press closed and the fingers of his right hand grasp uselessly at the grass as he rides the wave it brings. A tear leaks from his closed lids, forming a sideways salty trail across his face. He pulls in a shuddering breath of a sob and he tries to curl a little tighter around the agony inside him. 

“Evan?”

“Hurts,” he finally admits, voice pinched with pain and choked with tears. He forces open heavy eyes to find Connor frowning at him, his teeth worrying his lower lip and his eyebrows furrowed.

He almost looks in pain, too.

“The ambulance will be here soon, they’ll have morphine or some other good shit, yeah?” he says shakily, and the words are softer than any he ever thought Connor Murphy would ever be capable are saying.

Evan nods weakly, barely able to find the energy even for that, and swallows back the wave of nausea rolling in his aching stomach. He closes his eyes against the agony it brings

and he thinks he might have passed out for a while because suddenly Connor is looming over him again and he’s talking, tone pitched wrong and terrified. Evan doesn’t even try to understand what he’s saying, much too focused on the agony burning in his stomach, white-hot and angry. His throat is stinging with acid, and he can taste the sourness of vomit and the metallic tang of blood, and it takes him a good few seconds to realise he’s thrown up because he’s much too preoccupied with the agony clawing furiously inside him.

Somewhere in the distance, he can hear Connor’s panicked swearing

and he doesn’t remember passing out, but he must have done because Connor’s voice is urgent as he shakes him awake. It hurts. The shaking hurts and Evan finds himself crying, desperate protests on his iron lips, and weakly pushing Connor away with his shaking right hand. Connor takes it in his, holds it tightly.

Connor’s hands are warm against his cold skin and slightly sticky. They’re shaking too. 

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry, I know it hurts, but you need to stay awake, okay?” 

Evan swallows his cries and nods, and Connor stills his head and calls to him again. Reluctantly, he forces open his heavy eyes to find Connor’s mismatched onesfocused on him and wide with panic. Evan thinks his would be wide with panic, too, if he had the energy to keep them open because his heart is thrumming in his chest, much, much too quickly to be reasonable, and even breathing is an effort that brings more pain than he can bear. His mind is sluggish in comparison, and so muddled that he can barely remember what is going on.

He knows he fell from a tree. He knows Connor found him. He knows he hurts.

Everything hurts so much.

He wants his mom.

He thinks he might have said so, because Connor is shushing him again, saying that his mom be with him soon, he can see her at the hospital, but Evan doesn’t want her soon, he wants her now and then tears are running sideways across his face again and he doesn’t remember when they started.

He doesn’t really know why they’re there either.

He just knows he hurts. Like really, really hurts.

Connor’s biting his lip.

His eyes are wet too. 

“Just hold on a little longer, okay?” he says, almost desperately and Evan agrees, his voice so weak even he can barely hear it. He’s agreed because he doesn’t want to sleep because Connor doesn’t want him to, but between the pain and the tiredness and the muddle in his head it’s getting so, so hard to stay focused. His murky mind swims, winding and swirling and spiralling around confusion and pain and Connor’s worried calls. Nothing feels real any more.

And his stomach hurts.

Why does his stomach hurt?

He doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t have the energy to try. His vision swims a little

and then suddenly Connor is holding his hand again, or kind of holding it anyway. His grip is awkward, and his fingers are pressed to the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. His multicoloured eyes are wide and frantic and kind of red, and he looks absolutely terrified. Warm, soft, urgent words of encouragement are tumbling from his trembling lips, and Evan weakly tips his head in an attempt at a nod even though he isn’t meant to nod because much he’s too tired to talk. He’s surprised he remembers he isn’t meant to nod, because everything is making so little sense.

It all seems so far away.

Even the pain feels distant now.

He blinks, eyes heavier than they have ever been before

and then Connor’s yelling at him, his tone panicked and desperate and choked, and he’s too distant, too warped, for Evan to hear what the words are but he knows he’s telling him to stay awake.

He says that a lot.

Like maybe it’s important.

And Evan wants to stay awake, he really does because Connor seems so determined for him to, but he’s so, so tired and he doesn’t think he can.

He simply hasn’t energy.

Even his racing heart is growing weary.

It’s so awfully tired.

So is he.

He wants to sleep.

He shouldn’t.

But he doesn’t…

He can’t…

His anxious thoughts stall, and the world tilts, and the green forest darkens as his eyelids flutter closed.

A breeze blows and then even Connor’s terrified voice fades into nothing.

_I’m sorry_, Evan thinks. 

He falls.


	3. Bleary Mind, Broken Smile

Evan wakes dazed and groggy and with a head that feels like its clogged with cotton wool. His thoughts are slow and meandering, and it takes him much longer that it should to work out he’s lying in a bed he doesn’t think is his. Around him, the room is dim behind his closed eyelids and smells heavily of disinfectant and is awfully quiet save for a rhythmic beeping he knows he should be able to place but can’t.

He doesn’t know where his is, and he doesn’t have a clue why he’s there, and he kind of knows he should probably care about that even though, somehow, it doesn’t feel like it matters. He’s much too tired to care. Even thinking is much more of an effort than it’s worth.

A voice calls from beside him, one that’s soft and gentle and achingly familiar and so much sweeter that the recurring beeping it almost covers. Its speaking to him, he thinks, although he can’t be sure since the soothing words themselves are much too warped, much too distant for him to understand. Despite the familiarity of the tender, caring voice, he can’t quite work out who’s it is either.

He knows he should be able to. 

His expression pinches, nose ruffling.

There’s a tickle beneath it, he sluggishly realises, a breeze, warm and gentle against his nostrils. It’s entirely unexpected, confusing, and when he reaches up with a heavy hand to investigate, he finds there’s plastic tubing taped to his face. He doesn’t understand that either, and he doesn’t really like it, but when he tries to pull it off he finds he doesn’t have the coordination to grip the tube or the strength to pull it away. There’s a lead-like heaviness in his limbs, he finds, along with a floaty sort of numbness he doesn’t quite hate.

It turns out it doesn’t really matter he can’t remove the plastic tubing anyway, because the voice calls to him and a hand, soft and small and warm, finds his and gently pries it away from his face. He fights it weakly in protest, awfully confused but much too tired to be truly concerned.

It turns out his fighting doesn’t matter either, because whoever is there doesn’t let go. They hold on with a gentle firmness, their hand tight around his own weakly rebellious fingers. After a moment, they shift their grip until they’re more holding his hand than removing it. Their thumb runs soothing circles over his knuckles.

The voice comes again, asks if he can hear them, tells him he’s okay, and the words are soft and caring and the voice itself is so, so familiar, and this time, after a few long seconds, his mudded, sluggish brain finally places who’s it is.

His heavy heart lifts a little when he does. The rhythmic beeping flutters excitedly too.

His name comes again, the voice calling encouragingly, along with a soft request for him to open his eyes. Despite the leaden tiredness that shouldn’t be with him so soon after waking yet is, Evan can’t say no, and so he forces heavy eyes to flutter open, blinking lethargically until they finally focus on the blurry figure standing beside his bed.

Or not his bed, he corrects, because it isn’t his bed he’s in.

It is his mother standing there though. She’s vibrant against the unfamiliar whitewashed room, wearing purple scrubs with yellow butterflies, and her smile is bright and honest but her face is pale, skin not much pinker than the whitewashed wall behind her. She looks drained, too, or more so than is normal, with dark circles under her eyes that he belatedly realises can partly be blamed on her smudged mascara, and her hair pulled back into a scraggly ponytail at the nape of her neck. There’s worry in her expression too, her blue eyes pinched and hurting despite her smile, and he doesn’t understand that either.

He doesn’t understand a lot.

Like where he is.

Or how he got there.

Or why he’s there.

And suddenly, he’s awake enough for that to matter, and he doesn’t like it at all.

“What?” he croaks, confused and disorientated and with panic slowly brewing in his sluggish mind. His lost eyes roam the blurry, whitewashed room, not quite focusing and never stilling as he tries to work out what’s going on. He doesn’t like not knowing where he is, or why he’s there, or how he got there, or why him mom looks so, so worried behind her smile, and his heart hammers a little harder in his throat.

The beeping speeds too, the source’s distress growing with his own.

And that somehow doesn’t help.

At all.

His breathing faulters, catching in his spasming chest, and the monotonous beeping stutters rapidly, too. Evan doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t like it, and then, unexpectedly, a hand finds his face, cups his cheek.

The thumb runs tenderly over his cheekbone.

His mom calls to him again, his name troubled on her lips, and he forces his wildly wandering gaze back from the blurry room. He blinks bleary eyes into focusing. It mostly works, enough for him to see the smile on her pale lips and the sorrow in her eyes.

“Hey, Evan, it’s okay; you’re in the hospital,” she sooths, and her tone is calm and measured and reassuring yet painfully heavy with concern.

Her words help though, just a little, because hospital makes sense, hospital explains the whiteness and the smell of disinfectant, and because if she says it’s okay, then, maybe, it is. Her words don’t explain why, though, why he’s in the hospital, or how he got there, or what happened, and he kind of wants to know. He needs to know.

He tried to think back, tries to remember, and his aching, muddled head throbs a little in protest, tender in a way he hadn’t noticed before but can’t help but notice now, and all he can come up with is the vaguest of memories of a hand on his chin and a burn in his stomach and some telling him not to sleep, their tone tight and worried and choked with tears.

“You fell out of a tree, at the park. Do you remember?” Heidi tells him, and that sounds awfully familiar, he realises, and then he does kind of remember, now that she’s mentioned it.

None of it is clear, the memories foggy and distant and warped, but he remembers being in a forest, remembers laying on the ground, alone and hurting and lost until suddenly Connor had been there too, sat beside him with his hand stilling his head. He remembers them talking, ghosts of memories of snippets of conversation had in flickers of consciousness. He remembers feeling sad and worried, and not just for his own sake. He remembers Connors arms.

And through the bleary fog of his numb mind, that seems suddenly important.

“Where’s Connor?” he rasps, and it comes out kind of slurred, the ‘where’s’ lost on his fuzzy tongue leaving only Connor’s name to be heard. Heidi’s concerned expression morphs into confusion and then back again.

“Evan, it’s me. It’s Mom,” she says with gentle firmness, and Evan shakes his head, rolling it lethargically against the pillow because that isn’t what he meant at all. He wants to ask her again where Connor is, but he can’t find the words or the energy. He’s simply too tired, utterly exhausted even though he shouldn’t be tired at all because he’s just woken up. Even thinking is almost more of an effort than he is currently capable of.

He needs to think though, maybe, because where is Connor, and why…

Why what?

He doesn’t understand.

And, somehow, he can’t even quite remember what he doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t like it.

“I don’t…?” he starts, before the words trail off as he realises he doesn’t really know what he was intending to say. He’s exhausted and his brain is sluggish and bleary, and everything is starting to hurt just a little more than it had before, and he finds he’s physically longing for sleep despite just waking. Somehow, his mom must know that because then she’s telling him to rest, to sleep, and although Evan doesn’t really want to because he wants to know where Connor is now and why was he there before and why everything makes so little sense, he’s so tired he doesn’t think he has much choice.

He doesn’t have a choice.

His eyes flutter closed against his will, and although he wants to fight, he knows he can’t. He hasn’t the energy. The dim lighting darkens, and then the beeping fades, and his meandering thoughts stutter and slip. In the end, it’s the feeling of his mother’s hand holding his, her thumb soothing his knuckles, that calms his anxious heart as unconsciousness forcibly takes him once again. 

Evan startles awake to find himself laying in a narrow, plasticy bed in a dimly lit, whitewashed room. Through the haze of sleep, there’s a moment of panic, a feeling of Deja-vu, and then, as his sluggish brain restarts, the realisation that he’s in what he thinks could be a hospital room. He understands the bitter tang he can smell is disinfectant, and he can place the rhythmic beeping as a heart monitor, and he thinks the airy tickle below his nose might be oxygen, blown from the plastic tubing he can feel sitting on his ears and taped to his cheeks. Hospital, definitely, he thinks, which does make sense really, because along with the understanding of where he is, comes an understanding of why he’s there.

Of what happened.

His chest tightens as hazy memories of climbing a tree and the crack of a branch and the sense of peace that had come with letting go flit through his sluggish, muddled brain. Guilt surges sickeningly at the realisation that because he tried and because he failed, now he’s in the hospital, costing his poor mother money, his mother who will worry and fret and regret ever having him because now he’s proven what an awful, broken mess he is. She’ll hate him.

She’ll hate him more than she already does, and he deserves that.

He wishes he hadn’t tried.

He wishes he hadn’t failed even more.

There’s a figure slumped in a chair beside his bed, Evan realises, as his bleary eyes adjust a little, someone small and blond and dressed in violet scrubs with a grey hoodie draped over them like a blanket. Their head is bowed in sleep, and their face obscured by shadow, and although what little he can see Is blurry, Evan knows it’s his mother who is sleeping in an uncomfortable red plastic chair beside him.

He doesn’t really understand why she’s there, though; it’s clearly night, the lights are dimmed and the hospital hushed, and so she should be at home, in bed, or at school, or working a night shift, and yet, she isn’t. She’s there, still dressed from work in purple scrubs with smiling yellow butterflies and although he feels so guilty that she’s there, he isn’t alone, and that’s something.

Maybe.

His heavy, aching heart lifts a little.

“Mom?” he croaks almost inaudibly, voice ruined and throat sore, before swallowing reflexively in a vain attempt to alleviate the dryness. He calls again afterwards, planning on telling her to go, to work or home or school, wherever she’s meant to be, but coughs instead when the words catch in his rough throat.

His mom stirs, expression crumpling in her sleep, before rather abruptly, she jolts upright, dislodging the hoodie from her shoulders and sending it falling to the floor where it lands with a quiet flump. Her wide eyes blink dazedly as they roam the darkened room, and Evan wonders if, despite the hoodie being used as a blanket, maybe she didn’t mean to fall asleep. She relaxes after a moment, looking to almost deflate as the tension in her posture abates, and then smiles warmly, her tired eyes brightening, when she realises what has woken her. The chair scrapes a little as she stands.

“Hey, Honey, you with me this time?” she asks softly, as she brushes back his fringe with a fond hand. Evan rolls his head into the once familiar feeling before frowning when his tired brain finally processes what her soft words had said.

“This time?” he finds himself croaking, and it’s only after the words leave his lips that he realises maybe this isn’t the first time he has woken. He doesn’t remember waking before. He doesn’t remember how he got from the forest to the bed either, he realises, last he can really remember he was lying on parched grass with Connor beside him and a burning agony in his stomach, and although, when he focuses, there a vague flickers of memories that follow, of being somewhere bright and noisy and hectic, of people fussing and fretting, of pain and the discomfort of something digging into his chin and chest, they’re hazy and muddled and don’t really make much sense.

He doesn’t like it, not remembering what happened, and his heart speeds a little in worry.

The beeping speeds too.

“Hey, hey Evan, it’s okay,” Heidi soothes, calling him back from his spiralling thoughts. Her thumb is still running over his forehead, just like it did when he was little, when he was ill or upset or shaking in terror from one of the nightmares that used to plague him. “You woke up a little earlier, but it’s okay if you don’t remember, you were pretty sleepy. You’re on some pretty strong drugs, too.”

Evan focuses his bleary thoughts and… drugs… which does make sense, he decides; it explains the odd floating feeling and the sluggishness of his muddled brain. It explains the lack of pain too. He’d been hurting before, he remembers, and he isn’t now.

He’s thankful for that, at least.

He’s also thankful that Heidi, although so visibly tired and worried and upset, doesn’t seem cross with him, or disappointed, or like she regrets ever bringing him into the world, and an idea suddenly flickers into existence within Evan’s mind. He wonders if maybe, just maybe, she isn’t regretful, or cross, or disappointed because she doesn’t actually know what happened in the forest. Maybe she doesn’t know he didn’t exactly fall from the tree. Maybe she still doesn’t know what a broken, ugly mess her little guy has become.

Evan really, really hopes he’s right. Because if he is, then maybe everything isn’t quite as awful as he thought it was before. Maybe-

“Would you like to sit up a bit, then you can have a little drink?”

The tender words cut through wandering thoughts, focusing them, and Evan blinks his hazy eyes into focusing as much as they’re able too, before processing what has been said. He nods when he finally understands, and then there’s a mechanical whirring and slowly the head of his bed is raising. It doesn’t get all that high, he’s still mostly still laying down when Heidi replaces the remote on the metal railings with a light metallic clunk, but he’s more than a little relieved because his head is already spinning with a wooziness brought about by the sudden change in elevation.

“Water?” he hears, and he nods and then a plastic straw finds his lips. The marvellously cool water sooths his parched, gritty throat and washes the taste of stale iron from his fuzzy tongue. He doesn’t think water has ever tasted quite so good before, or felt quite so good, and he drinks greedily until suddenly he can’t, the water taken back before he’s had his fill. He opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing to frown at his mother.

There are tired protests on his chapped lips.

“You can have more later,” she tells him firmly but with the softness in her voice that has yet to leave since he woke, and he pouts tiredly, wanting to argue but lacking the energy. He’s lacking the energy for pretty much everything, he realises sluggishly. Even staying awake is a challenge. He doesn’t really understand why.

Heidi places the cup back on the table, watched by Evan’s heavy, tired eyes, eyes which then wander, curious despite his exhaustion, exploring the blurry room he’s woken up in. The walls are white, and the ceiling too, and the floor is chequered with lino tiles. There are two beds in the room, he finds, the other unmade and empty and the table beside it void of belongings.

His own bed is made up with white linen and a thin blue blanket, and there’s a quietly beeping machines on one side, it’s screen showing numbers and graphs and a green line that beats with his heart, and the red plastic chair on the other. There’s a pole beside his bed too, with bags of fluid, two clear and one red hanging from it, and all three have tubes running from them, looping into his bed and then disappearing into various patches of sticky tape spread along the inside of his good arm. They pull a little, if he thinks about it. He tries not to.

His wandering eyes find his other arm, the one that had been throbbing awfully and bent where it really shouldn’t have been last he remembers. It isn’t bent any more, it’s straight, which is nice, and bandaged and propped up on pillows and it doesn’t hurt any more either, which is very nice too, but there’s also metal sticking out of it, and that’s…

Evan blinks, sluggish mind puzzled, and then sits up a little more, his chest clenched and breathing held and alarm growing rapidly in his suddenly accelerating heart. The effort hurts, his head throbs and his stomach twinges and something pulls uncomfortably at the skin of his right arm, but none of that matters because there’s metal poking out of his skin of his left arm and that’s not right. That’s not right at all.

It’s wrong wrong wrong, and he reaches for the metal with his shaking right hand, the tubes and the grey wire of the monitor clipped to his index finger trailing behind, because metal isn’t right, it shouldn’t be there, and he doesn’t want it there. The metal is cold and hard, and it hurts when he knocks it with uncoordinated fingers, pain burning through the drugs, and then Heidi’s calling to him and a hand catches his, gently prying his probing fingers away from the framework protruding from his skin. The hand holds tightly when he fights.

“Hey, Evan. Evan, look at me.”

Heidi’s command cuts through the panic, calls him back from his racing thoughts, and then he can feel a hand on his cheek and his frantic heart fluttering in his throat. He can hear the rapid beeping of his monitor and the shallow, frequent gasps of his own wheezing breathing, and the gentle, soft coaxing words of his mother. Her hand is still on his face. It’s pulling gently, and he allows it to guide his head round, turning it until he’s facing her. Her eyes hold his, pained blue pouring into his panicked hazel.

“That’s it,” she sooths, and her thumb skims tenderly over his cheek. “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

Evan swallows, tries to glance back but the hand on his cheek stills his head. It’s an achingly familiar feeling. So is the growing throb radiating from his left wrist.

“My arm?”

Heidi forces a small, forged smile, lips curving, the corners lifting, but her eyes staying troubled.

He wonders if it’s meant to be comforting. It really isn’t.

“It’s broken pretty badly, honey,” she tells him softly, still caressing his cheek. “The metal’s just temporary, they’re going to fix it properly soon, but they need to wait a few days first. Just-” she swallows thickly, “-it’s going to be okay, yeah?”

Evan nods against her hand, more because she seems to need it than because he believes her shaking words, and then her hand drops from his cheek. She takes it briefly to her mouth before she seems to think better of it and goes to hold the metal railings of the bed instead. The nails are bitten and torn, just like Evan’s tend to be. He doesn’t remember them looking like that before.

He think’s maybe it’s his fault they’re like that now.

No. He knows it is.

Sadness grows, stirring with the guilt already playing in his stomach, and it’s then the exhaustion hits too, the adrenaline surge that had brought him upright fading as quickly as it had come. He slumps back against the pillows, frowning at an ache in his chest he had yet to notice, and Heidi’s smile grows a little more genuine. She gives his hand a squeeze.

“That’s it, get some rest,” she says, and he nods because what else is there for him to do. Rest sounds nice anyway, he realises; he’s very tired. His heavy eyelids flutter.

A moment passes, another thought wanders into his sluggish mind, and then a frown grows on his bitten lips.

“Why?”

Heidi hums, tilts her head, expression suddenly lost beside the worry.

“Why rest?”

Evan shakes his head.

“Why ‘wait’?”

A beat, and then her eyes widen in realisation before they tighten again. She rubs his knuckles, her thumb skimming softly over his grazed skin.

“One of your kidneys was hurt when you fell,” she explains softly, a forced calm in her tone, “And it should heal by itself but it’s still bleeding a little. They need to wait for it to stop before they can operate properly on your arm.”

It takes Evan a second to process what’s been said, his tired, muddled mind achingly slow, but once he’s there, he sluggishly realises what’s been said does kind of makes sense. Both the need for his surgery to wait and the news of internal bleeding.

“My stomach was hurting?” he half asks, half says, because he remembers the burning in his back, the ache in his stomach that had grown to an agony that seared awfully, relentlessly plaguing him until the blessed numbness of unconsciousness had arrived. He vaguely remembers vomiting too, and the metallic tang of iron that had accompanied the sour burn of acid.

“Yeah, I know,” she says, and she says it like the words hurt. She looks down at his hand, the one still held in hers and gives it a squeeze. Her eyes seem almost shiny in the dim lighting. She blinks them forcefully then swallows. “You’re not hurting now, are you?”

Evan frowns at the change in topic, and then shakes his head because he isn’t, not really. His arm feels weird, unpleasant, now he’s thinking about it, but it doesn’t hurt exactly, and his head is kind of achy and slow and muddled in a way he isn’t sure he can entirely blame on the drugs, but other than that he just feels pretty numb, like he isn’t quite real any more. He isn’t sure he likes it.

“I’m good,” he sort-of-lies, and forces a flicker of a smile onto his dry lips. It’s meant to be reassuring, but he isn’t sure it is. 

Heidi smiles too, sadly, just like always, her eyes staying concerned and unlit. Evan aches inside in a way he knows is nothing to do with his broken arm or bleeding kidney.

“That’s good.” Her words are sad too. There’s a pause, and then, “You can sleep if you’d like, get some rest?”

The suggestion comes almost out of the blue; Evan hasn’t said he’s tired, and the logical part of him wonders if maybe she’s seen he’s losing the battle with his leaden eyelids, noticed the increased lengths of his fluttering blinks and the heaviness with which his head is resting upon the pillows. She is a nurse’s aide after all. And his mother.

The rest of him, though, the part of him he knows he shouldn’t listen to but does, wonders if maybe she’s just fed up with him already. He’d understand if she was. He is.

Sleep does sound really, really quite inviting, though, he’s really, awfully tired and thinking is very much an effort. So is staying awake. But… but can he really sleep when his mother has taken the time from wherever she should be to sit beside his bed? He shouldn’t.

He can’t not sleep though; he’s so tired. Drowsy.

_Drugged_.

He should tell her to go, though, to bed or work or school, she shouldn’t be sitting there when he’s not even conscious. She shouldn’t be sitting there, full stop, really. He doesn’t deserve it. 

She wouldn’t want to if she knew what he’d done.

So, Evan should tell her to go, he should, he really should, but despite knowing that and the guilt squirming in his stomach at her presence, he doesn’t think he can find the strength. Despite knowing she has places to be, he doesn’t want to be alone.

It’s selfish.

It’s pathetic and selfish and she deserves so much better, and-

“Sleep,” his mother tells him, voice soft and kind and loving, “I’ll be here when you wake,” and Evan, somehow finds himself nodding, his aching, lonely heart winning the fight against his racing, self-loathing thoughts. His heavy eyelids flutter, their battle to stay open lost, and then, in the darkness, there’s the quiet rustle of starchy hospital sheets as his mother tucks him in. She presses a kiss to his forehead and there’s soft, almost heartbroken murmured words, “I love you so much,” she says. Evan kind of wants to reply, to tell her he loves her, too, she deserves it for loving a mess like him, but his meandering thoughts are already unwillingly fading as the drugs and exhaustion and the once familiar feeling of a thumb rubbing soothing circles over his forehead draw him back to sleep.

It’s morning when Evan wakes, or at least, he assumes it is. The room is brighter behind his closed eyelids, and along with the beeping of his heart monitor, he can hear the typical hustle and bustle of a hospital. He can hear distant conversations, and footsteps, and the squeaking of wheels, and after a moment, an unfamiliar voice calling his name.

It’s what woke, him, he supposes.

His brows furrow a little, and the voice calls again, and it’s asking him to open his eyes, the words kind and encouraging but firm, and so, sluggishly, he does. They close again almost immediately, the room much too bright, almost painfully so, and when he finally convinces them to flutter open again, he ends up squinting at the man in a white coat who stands beside his bed. He’s a doctor, Evan sluggishly realises. _His_ doctor, maybe. That would make sense.

It isn’t just the doctor who is there though, his mom is there too, standing just behind him.

Her eyes are exhausted, the skin below them dark, more so that when they spoke in the night and Evan wonders if she managed to get any more sleep after he dropped off. They look a little red too, and her expression pained behind the joyless smile she has plastered to her lips. She’s always smiling, he realises, but she’s never happy.

It makes Evans heart hurt.

His attention is taken back from his mother by the doctor calling his name. The man’s voice is gentle but strong as he introduces himself as Dr Shepard and then asks Evan if he knows where he is.

“Hospital,” Evan croaks weakly, throat sore, and although he does know where he is, the answer comes out more as a question all the same. His words often do, there’s no confidence to them. It’s something Dr Sherman has told him to work on. Evan kind of wonders why, it’s futile, but then the doctor is speaking again, asking if he remembers why he’s there. And Evan does remember why he’s there, he remembers the tree and the fall, or, no, not fall, because he didn’t actually fall, and the time on the grass below, but he can’t say what has happened. He can’t say he didn’t fall.

Although, maybe … maybe he did fall?

Maybe … the branch did break after all. 

“I fell. From a tree,” he says, eyes averted. Or asks, really, but this time it’s more because he doesn’t entirely know what they know about the cause of his decent from the oak. He doesn’t know what Connor told them, or if he told them anything at all. Evan hopes he didn’t. He does kind of wonder what happened to Connor after he passed out. Maybe he came along in the ambulance, held his hand as he had done when they had been together on the forest floor, Evan barely conscious due to blood loss and pain and Connor beside him, eyes wide and desperate and hurting too. Maybe he hadn’t, maybe he’d left after the ambulance arrive, wandered back into the depths of the forest to continue his high without the hinderance of having a mess of a classmate to keep conscious. Maybe he hadn’t waited around at all. What would be the point once Evan had passed out properly?

That almost seems most likely.

He wonders what Connor was doing in the forest too, in the depths so far from the path, alone and high and …. Evan remembers his arms too, and his understanding, and his heart speeds a little. The beeping speeds too. He wishes it wouldn’t.

He wishes he knew if Connor was okay or not, as well.

The doctor is still there though, still looking at him with unreadable eyes, and so Evan continues. “The branch broke,” he adds, because, well, it is true, isn’t it? It is what started his fall. 

There’s a moment, and then the doctor nods.

“Okay,” he says simply, and his tone is as unreadable as his eyes. Heidi’s expression is much more readable, her emotions on display as they so often are whether she wants them to be or not. She’s concerned though, and upset, biting her lip as she watches Evan and his doctor interact, her eyes flicking almost cautiously between the two. Evan doesn’t really understand why.

The doctor asks more questions after that. Of how Evan is, and if he’s in any pain, and then when his birthday is, and the current day of the week (Evan gets this one wrong, he’s a day off, but no one seems to be overly concerned), and then the year, and who the president is, and then gives Evan three words to remember, duck, table, and shoe. He shines a light in his eyes after that, and then asks him to follow his finger, and then squeeze his hand, and then asks if he’s having any problems with his vision, which is blurry but no more so than usual, or hearing.

And it’s all a bit much, really, Evan finds, and by the end of it all his head is aching, the throb burning through the fog that’s taken up residency inside his skull, and he’s utterly exhausted.

The doctor checks his arm too, and that hurts despite the gentleness of the man’s hands and the painkillers he can feel numbing his system, and then inspects some stitching on his head Evan didn’t even know was there, and then, when he’s happy with that, he asks what the three words were. And Evan can remember them, and he says so, and Dr Shepard must be satisfied because then he’s talking, to Heidi, maybe, Evan reasons, but he isn’t quite sure, everything’s getting a bit distant again.

He thinks he might have fallen back asleep sometime during Dr Shepard’s visit because next thing he knows his mother is waking him, her hand on his cheek, and through the haze, he thinks she might be telling him he’s going for another scan.

He sleeps through the scan, one to check on his still bleeding kidney, he thinks he remember them saying, and when he finally wakes properly, he’s back in his room, and his mom is again sat beside his bed. She’s reading, he realises, when his tired eyes finally blink the whitewashed room into some semblance of focus.

“Hey,” she says when she notices he’s awake, and she closes her tired paperback. The book makes a gentle thud as she places it on the cluttered bedside table beside a mostly empty box of tissues. She stands beside his bed and rolls her shoulders with a grimace. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” Evan admits, because through the fog, he can’t think of much else to say. He is tired though, completely and utterly exhausted. “Why?” he asks, because, well, because why is all he seems to be able to do is sleep, and he doesn’t think she’ll understand his question, it’s kind of vague, but instead of frowning in confusion like he expects, she gives him a small, sympathetic smile.

“You’re on some strong painkillers at the moment, and you’ve got a concussion, and, well…” She trails off, and although she looks like she has more to say more, she bites at her lip instead. Her hand shakes a little as she brushes his fringe from his eyes. “Do you remember earlier? Dr Shepard gave you three words to remember?”

Evan frowns, his brows puckering both at the sudden change in topic and at the question itself, but then, with a little thought, he thinks that maybe that does kind of sound familiar. The memories of his visit are distant, almost dreamlike but definitely there, and Evan fights through the syrup in his brain until…

“Duck, table, and shoe?” he mutters, bleary eyes frowning and the words a question. They must be right, though, because Heidi nods, and her smile becomes just a little more genuine. It’s in relief, Evan thinks, relief that his brain is still kind of working the way it’s meant to. Despite her smile, she still looks sad, her eyes tired and pinched and a little too bright as they hold his. 

“You’re gonna be okay, hmm,” she murmurs softly, her fingers still carding gently through his hair, and although her words are reassuring, the tone she says them in is much too tight, much too emotional for it to truly bring him any comfort. Her expression is pained and distant, too, her mind upset and elsewhere, and quite suddenly, Evan realises he isn’t altogether sure which of them she’s trying to comfort anymore.

Judging by her expression, he no longer thinks it’s him that needs it most. His heart aching, Evan leans his head a little harder into her touch.

“Yeah, mom, for sure,” he agrees quietly, trying to smile up at her with more strength that he actually has.

His mom nods, and blinks heavily, and tilts her head to the side just a little.

“I love you so much, you know?” she says, and they’re words Evan hears from her often and so frequently reads at the bottom of the notes she leaves if she has gone to work before he wakes, but never before have they sounded quite so honest, quite so raw. For the first time in what might even be years, Evan wonders if maybe, just maybe, they might actually be true.

For Evan, the next two days pass in as much of a blur as the first. He spends most of them asleep which is apparently entirely expected as he’s recovering both from the injuries themselves and from the blood loss the tear in his kidney has resulted in, and between the strong painkillers dripping into his arm and the concussion, he remembers little of what happened in the short periods of wakefulness in any sort of detail.

He knows his mom is always with him when he wakes, though, or nearly always anyway. She works, yes, night shifts, because he’s more likely to be asleep then, he thinks, and on a couple of occasions he remembers waking during the day to a note from her beside him rather than her herself, the familiar, loopy handwriting explaining she has gone to shower, or eat, or change her clothes and promising she’ll be back soon. The notes always end the same – ‘I love you, always, love Mom xx’.

Sometimes, she’s sleeping when he wakes, and sometimes reading, and sometimes on her laptop. He asked her what she was doing on it once, and at first, she had changed the subject, but then when he’d asked again, she’d admitted she was working, school work, not work work, and it was then that he’d realised she hadn’t been going to class.

He hadn’t really considered she hadn’t been going before, time hadn’t stayed straight enough in his head for him to even start to notice she was there at times she shouldn’t have been, but once he was aware, his gut had grown tight with guilt and worry. He’d wanted to tell her to go, insist that her staying beside his bed whilst he sleeps wasn’t necessary, but he’d been much too tired, much too fuzzy, and he’d droped back off to sleep seconds later, his sluggish, muddled mind still blearily agonising over her missed lectures.

Once, towards the end of the second day, he thinks, he wakes and she’s talking, her voice hushed so as not to wake him but cracking with emotion, and it takes his drugged, concussed, and still half asleep brain much longer than it should to work out she’s on the phone. He doesn’t know who she’s talking to, and for a second, he wonders if it’s his dad, surely he’d want to know if his first-born son was in the hospital, but then his brain catches up with his heart and he’s reminded that that isn’t true.

That his dad doesn’t care.

His mom is clearly upset though, her voice tight and wet, and Evan wants to hold her and comfort her and ask her what’s wrong, but he’s just barely conscious and still awfully drowsy with morphine and struggling with his concussion, and can only understand, “It was so close, Janet, so … fuck … I can’t … I was so close to losing him,” before, to the sound of fading crying, his hold on consciousness slips again.

His dad does phone though, in the middle of the afternoon of the third day. And by that point, Evan is feeling just a little more himself. He’s sitting up in bed, propped there by pillows because he’s still too weak to sit unsupported for long, but neither dizzy nor nauseous and that in itself is a pretty big achievement. He’s had a little lunch too, his first food in days, and they’ve lowered his morphine dose a fraction meaning that staying awake isn’t quite so much of an effort. His head is a little clearer, too, and so he’s managed to have an actual conversation of sorts with his mom. She’s finally remembered to bring his glasses back with her from home too, and so the white-washed room he’s now living in is no longer disconcertingly blurry.

So, it’s all going, well, not well, he’s still in hospital with a concussion and internal bleeding and a messily fractured arm because he fell from a tree, but … better. It’s going better.

And then his dad rings.

He calls Evan ‘bud’ which is never a good start, because Evan isn’t his buddy, and never will be, and he doesn’t really want a bud, and never has, not in that sense anyway. He wants a dad. Or wanted, really. He’s given up on that now.

Mark asks how he’s feeling though, and Evan says he’s feeling okay, just tired, which is his standard response now, honest but not too honest, and his dad says good, and then mentions Heidi telling him Evan fell from a tree, and Evan confirms it, because it’s true.

And then there’s an awful, awkward silence, because Evan’s father doesn’t ever know what to talk to him about anymore which is hardly surprising because normally, they don’t communicate at all other than by text on holidays. Evan gets a ‘Happy Birthday’ once a year, sometimes on his actual birthday, if he’s lucky, and most years a ‘Merry Christmas’ too, despite Heidi technically bringing him up Jewish, and once or twice, he’s received a ‘Happy New Year’ text, too.

They haven’t called each other in years now, although that’s partially Evan’s fault, and they haven’t seen each other for much longer, not since Evan was 11 and went to his dad’s second wedding where he married his new wife, with whom he then started a new life with new kids. Better kids. Non-broken kids.

The reminder that his dad really, truly doesn’t care about him anymore because he has a new, better family hurt.

A lot.

It hurts that his father doesn’t know what to say.

Doesn’t have anything to say about him being alive and healing other than ‘that’s good’.

And then Evan’s crying, and he isn’t all that sure why. It hurts, though, the memories, the loneliness, the abandonment, but he’s used to that. Kind of.

The phone is taken from his hand and there are words and then a tinny beep as the call is ended, and then his mom is holding him, her arms around him and his head against her chest and his glasses pressed uncomfortably against his nose. She’s asking if he’s hurting, if he’s in pain, and he nods because it’s true, even if it isn’t really the sort of pain she’s thinking of. Instantly, one of her hands unwraps itself from around his back, and then there’s another beep, a different one, one he only sluggishly understands to be made by his morphine pump when a coldness spreads from his arm and drags him back to sleep.

Evan is woken later in the day for dinner, and then again for yet another scan. This one finally, finally gives the good news they’ve been waiting for, and after the connected bag is empty, the needle used for the blood transfusion that had been keeping him alive for the past few days is capped.

“You should go to class.”

Heidi looks up from her laptop at his croaked words, her expression minutely startled. The skin beneath her widened eyes is dark and bruised, and her hair is mussed and a little greasy and pulled back into a rough pony-tail. She’s exhausted, it’s obvious even to Evan, as drowsy and drugged as he is. It’s even obvious despite her looking really quite blurry to him. His glasses are probably on his bedside table but moving to get them really isn’t worth the effort. 

“Oh, you’re awake! How are you feeling?”

Evan ignores the question.

“You don’t have to stay here all the time,” he says instead, focusing on her with still heavy eyes. “I’m okay.” It isn’t entirely true, he’s still drowsy with painkillers and not feeling overly well, and he still has metal sticking grotesquely out of his messily fractured arm, but he’s no longer in danger. His mom no longer needs to sit beside him just in case.

She can go home instead, sleep in a bed instead of a hard, plastic chair, eat a proper meal rather than something scooped up as she hurries past the canteen on her way up from work, do her schoolwork at the table which has to be better than sat beside him with her laptop perched on her knees. She can go to school, too. She needs to go to school. She’ll get behind otherwise.

Fail her degree.

“I know I don’t have to,” she says as she stands, a frown on her lips and her brow. “But I want to be here. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

Evan grimaces at her answer.

“But you have school?”

A second passes. His mom is frowning.

“What’s brought this on?”

Evan looks away. The fingers of his right hand pluck at a loose thread on the thin cotton blanket that covers him.

“Mom, please? I’m- I’m okay?”

Heidi looks at him for a second, and then sighs and takes his hand, stills his restless fingers. He doesn’t fight her grip, lets her run her thumb over his knuckles. 

“Evan, listen to me; I’m not going anywhere unless I really have to.”

“But you’ll get behind?” he protests, miserable. He doesn’t want her to fail. He doesn’t want to be the reason she fails either.

Beside him, his mom sighs.

“Oh, Evan, sweetheart,” she says, her voice gentle and her expression fond and a little confused. She touches his chin, lifts softly until he looks up to meet her eyes. “You shouldn’t be worrying about me, it’s my job to worry about you. Especially when you’re hurt.” Her expression faulters briefly before she regains her composure. “I’m okay, though, really; I can catch up on whatever I miss when you’re feeling better. You didn’t get your brains from your father, you know!”

Her smile widens, almost teasingly, and she’s aiming for lightness, Evan knows, but he ignores it.

“You’ve been here so much.”

His mom’s smile drops. “I know I have, but, Evan,-” her voice tightens, saddens, and her eyebrows furrow, knitting together- “I don’t think you realise just how poorly you were.”

“I’m okay?”

“I know. I know, you’re going to be okay, but you nearly- you nearly died, Evan. I don’t think you understand how close it was?” Her voice cracks. She swallows. “When the paramedics arrived, you were unconscious, and you weren’t really breathing properly, and your heart was struggling. Hypovolemic shock, they said. And even after they got you here, they were worried. Really, really worried, Evan. Your kidney wouldn’t stop bleeding, and they kept giving you blood but, well …” she breaks off, swallows wetly. “They were so, so close for taking you for emergency surgery.”

A tear leaks from a tired blue eye, and she wipes at it almost angrily before taking his hand again, both of hers clasped around his so tightly it hurts. His heart hurts more though, much more, almost unbearably.

“Mom-”

“You’re okay, I know, you’re going to be okay. But I can’t … it was so close, Evan, so … they told me not to go anywhere, just in case. And I stayed and held your hand, kept talking just in case you could hear. And you looked so pale and ill and small, and then when you still hadn’t woken up by that evening, told me they couldn’t be sure there hadn’t been damage to your brain. Your oxygen saturations had been so low for so long and-”

“Mom, please, I’m not… I’m okay, now,” Evan interrupts, his aching heart unable to take her pain any longer.

Startled, his mom freezes, her grieving eyes suddenly wide with the realisation of what she’s just allowed herself to say. A second passes, and then she nods, and swallows, and sniffles, and tries her best at a smile. It wobbles a little but holds.

“I know, I know, you’re … it’s going to be okay,” she repeats, and her voice sounds just a little more composed. It sounds so very exhausted too. Brittle, almost. She rubs at her eyes with the sleeve of her hoodie, leaving them swollen and red, her lashes sticky with salt and her mascara smudged, but they’re at least no longer wet. “I’m sorry, I’m just overly tired … it’s been a lot, these past few days.”

Evan knows it has, for her more than him. He’s been asleep for so much of it, and even the time he has been awake he’s spent drifting on morphine, his thoughts muddled by the concussion.

His mother hasn’t been asleep though.

Or not for long anyway. She’s sat beside him, waiting for him to stabilise, then wake, then for his torn kidney to stop bleeding. She’s spent days worrying, at first fearing she may lose him, and then worrying he won’t be him when he wakes, and then just making sure he’s okay, not in pain, not in need of anything. She’s been hurting, and upset, and so, so scared, and Evan knows it’s entirely his fault.

And she doesn’t even know. She can’t.

Guilt hits like a tsunami, and then, suddenly, there are tears in his own eyes.

“I’m so, so sorry,” he mumbles wetly, wanting to say more, so much more, wanting to never have tried if this is the pain it’s causing her, wanting to have succeeded because even that would have been better for her than this, but knowing none of that can happen. None of it.

He sniffles, swallowing thickly, and Heidi releases his hand, wipes at the rogue tear on his lashes. Her hand cups his cheek.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she tells him, so, so softly, and Evan, heart aching and guilt churning sickeningly in his gut, looks away. 

Evan has surgery on his arm on the fourth day, and he wakes from the general anaesthesia groggy and nauseous and dizzy, but relieved because at least that awful metal sticking out of his skin has gone. It’s been replaced by internal pins and screws and covered with a rough plaster cast that covers his arm from knuckles to armpit.

He spends much of the rest of the day dozing, sleeping off the anaesthetic and floating on an increased dose of morphine, and whenever he wakes, in the blips of dazed consciousness between naps, his mom is always there, and that causes a pain even the morphine can’t solve.

The fifth day dawns, and Evan finds he’s feeling better. Not better as in well, but better as in certainly not as poorly as the he has felt the last however many days. He gets up, after breakfast, or the doctor gets him up anyway, and his mom and a nurse support him as he walks on shaky legs to the chair beside his bed, and then, a little later, to the bathroom and back. It’s tiring, walking, he discovers, in a way it really, really shouldn’t be.

The bathroom trip is a little unnerving too, he finds, because there’s a mirror and so, for the first time since he fell, he can actually see the damage he’s done to himself. He doesn’t like it. Not at all. It almost makes the sadness in his mother’s eyes when she sees him make sense.

It isn’t until the afternoon of the fifth day, when Evan had already assumed it wouldn’t happen, that his mom finally asks about Connor. Or not about Connor exactly, just about the boy who had been with him in the forest, the one mentioned by the paramedics to the doctors down in the ER who had then passed the information to her, because, as it turns out, Connor hadn’t stuck around long enough to tell anyone his name.

And that isn’t unexpected, both because surely someone would have already mentioned him if he had, and because Evan entirely understands why Connor wouldn’t want to be associated with him, with the broken mess he has become, even if he hadn’t wanted to leave before the ambulance arrived and be at least partially responsible for his death. The lady on the phone had told him to keep him awake, after all, Evan remembers that.

It hurts all the same, though, knowing for sure that Connor hadn’t cared enough to stay even if he’s suspected it all along, and for a moment, Evan considers surrendering to his mom’s questioning expression and counterfeit smile and hurting, mournful eyes and telling her who was there. In the end he doesn’t, because if Connor doesn’t want to be associated with him, then it’s unfair of Evan to spill his secret. He owes him, after all.

He saved his life.

Even if that hadn’t really been what he’d wanted to happen.

And so, he shakes his head instead of replying, and tells her he can’t remember who was there, that he can’t remember much of his time of the forest floor at all, and she nods, and for a moment, Evan wrongly assumes the conversation is over. and then,

“You, erm, you said ‘Connor’, the first night you were here?”

Evan looks up, alarmed, finds his mom staring at him, her expression conflicted, caught somewhere between confused and argumentative.

He blinks. Frowns.

“I don’t remember,” he worries, truthfully, because he really doesn’t. Not that it’s all that surprising, he realises belatedly; he doesn’t remember a lot from the first few days, and he must have been pretty out of it to say Connor’s name in the first place.

“Oh, well, no, I don’t think you would, but, was it a Connor who was with you, maybe?” she presses, and Evan kind of knows why she wants to know; she wants to know who’s responsible for saving her son’s life, she wants to thank them, but Connor doesn’t want to be known, and Evan has to respect that.

And so, he looks down at the blanket, plucks at the broken blue thread, and lies.

He tells her again that he doesn’t remember, that he doesn’t know a Connor, not well anyway, and suggests maybe she misheard him. She doesn’t look convinced, her frown deepening, and Evan thinks she might be about to say more, probe and pry because she needs someone to thank, so he sighs and rolls his head into his pillow.

“I’m tired,” he says, and it isn’t a lie, he’s always tired nowadays, but it is just an excuse to end the conversation.

For a long second, Heidi says nothing, eyebrows furrowed as though she’s working out a puzzle, but then she nods and says she’ll let him rest and goes to dim the lighting above his bed.

She sits beside him as he falls asleep. 

It’s on the sixth day, after poking and prodding and tests and one last scan of his kidney, that Evan’s doctors finally, finally, deem him well enough to continue his recovery at home.

That afternoon becomes an exhausting flurry of activity, of doctors removing stitches, and explaining medication dosages and dressing changes and what he can and can’t do, and nurses removing tubes and wires and sensors. There’s the booking of follow up appointments, and the prescribing of everything needed to keep him healing and comfortable, and the packing of the surprisingly large collection of their belongings that have managed to migrate to the room in the six days he’s been there.

Evan gets dressed whist his mom talks to his surgeon, struggling with his bulky, inflexible left arm, and by the time she returns he’s wearing a pair of his own loose jogging bottoms and a too big faded black t-shirt that Heidi thought he wouldn’t find quite so hard to fit over the cast.

There’s a sling too, made of soft, felty fabric, and his mom has to fasten it for him after she returns and then gently help ease his heavy plaster cast inside. The fabric is blue, very blue, and looks awfully bright, awfully noticeable, against his black t-shirt, but he doesn’t protest because he’s exhausted and a little overwhelmed and because, despite the dregs of morphine still running through his veins, his arm is really rather sore. Afterwards, she drapes the familiar soft grey hoodie he is yet to explain isn’t his over his shoulders, explaining it’s so he won’t get cold outside since he seems to be almost constantly cold now.

Evan frowns at the summer sun shining brightly outside his window and tries not to think about the familiarity of being cold and shivery in August. 

A wheelchair is brought to the room afterwards and following a few quick goodbye’s to the doctors and nurses and many ‘get well soon’s in response, Heidi pushes him through the hospital and then out into the parking lot in search of her battered, red Ford. She waits patiently for him to move from the chair to the car and get settled in his seat, and then takes it back inside.

Evan anxiously waits for her to return, slightly overwhelmed and feeling just a little out of place alone and unmonitored in the car. His mom isn’t gone for long, hurrying back across the parking lot as she returns as though she isn’t quite comfortable with leaving him alone there either, and when she climbs into the car herself, she turns to him and makes sure he’s settled and comfy and not in pain before she buckles her seatbelt and turns the key in the ignition.

The engine stutters tiredly into life, and then, after an unhealthy groan from the breaks, they’re driving through the maze of a parking lot towards the exit. It takes them longer than it should and two wrong-way-taken one-way stretches of road for them to leave the parking lot, but eventually they do and then, six days after he first arrived at the hospital, Evan’s finally heading home.

He leans his head against the window as they drive, exhausted and hurting and a little nauseous but relieved, both because he’s missed home and his own bed and the privacy that had been impossible to find in the hospital, and because he’s finally no longer adding to the mounting medical bill his mother is going to have to figure out how to pay. His hospital stay, which although necessary was entirely his own fault, must have cost his mother a fortune, and for that he finds he hates himself even more.

That evening, Evan sits in his room while his mom runs a shallow bath so he can wash away grime and blood the washes he’d had at the hospital had never been fully successful at removing. He’s longing to use his own soap and shampoo, too, wash away lemon scent of the soap they’d used there the lingering tang of disinfectant he seems to have brought home with him from the hospital.

He sits on his bed as he waits, worn from tackling a staircase that shouldn’t have been an effort yet was, and considers how, with the exception of his missing pillow and the now open curtains, nothing looks any different from how it had when he had hurried from his room nearly a week ago. Nothing much looked different downstairs either, the only noticeable changes being the larger than normal ironing pile in their living room and the stack of used plates collecting beside the sink.

And that does make sense, there’s no reason for anything to be different to how it was before, no reason for anything to have changed, and yet, for some reason, Evan feels like it really should have. Maybe because although nothing at all has changed, to him, everything has.

Since he was last there, last sat on his bed in his blue-walled room, he has fallen from a tree and torn a kidney and injured his head and broken his arm in five places. Since he was last there, he has very, very nearly died and it had kind of been his fault, since although he hadn’t jumped from the tree, he had done nothing to stop his natural fall from an unnatural height. He had tempted it to happen, even, and that make everything feel very different.

It makes him feel very different, awfully so, and almost out of place in his unchanged house.

And so, he sits there in a room that should have changed yet hasn’t and feels even more disconnected from the world than usual. It’s like the window between him and reality is now just a little foggier, a little more mottled, and it leaves Evan feeling even more isolated, even more alone than ever.


	4. Nothing (But Everything) Has Changed

The two weeks that pass between the day Evan returns home from the hospital and the day he returns to school are long, and exhausting, and painful in more ways than one.

He spends the first few on the sofa, miserable and hurting and utterly exhausted but much too sore to truly sleep. His head pounds dully along with his heart and his arm aches despite the ice that so often lays over his cast and the cushions it is rests upon and the bruised-not-broken ribs that hadn’t hurt enough to bother him before make finding a comfortable position to lay in a near impossible task even with all the pillows Heidi insists on bringing down from their beds.

Although he is beyond relief that he is finally no longer adding to the hospital bill he shouldn’t have but does, he finds himself sorely missing the morphine they had been dripping into his unbroken arm at the hospital.

Heidi stays with him during those first few days when he all he can do is lay on the sofa, too pained and exhausted and groggy to do little other than wish for the numbness of sleep in his bleary fragments of consciousness.

She brings him drinks he attempts and food he doesn’t and the painkillers he has been prescribed but do little to help when he needs them. She keeps him company when he is awake, making cheery comments with a painful fake enthusiasm on the simple, boring shows he still struggles to understand, and she sits quietly beside him, her hand in his hair and kind, soft words of comfort on her lips in the moments between doses of medicine when he can do little more than attempt to hold in hot, aching tears of pain. Sometimes he manages, sometimes he doesn’t. She stays even when he is asleep, working quietly on her laptop in the kitchen because although he is home now, she’s still missing classes. 

And that all hurts too, his second sort of pain, almost worse than the ache in his head and the throb in his royally fucked up arm and the soreness of his bruised-not-broken ribs because he isn’t in danger any more, he isn’t even in the hospital, and yet he’s still needing help, still a burden to her in a way he really doesn’t want to be and yet is.

It’s his fault though, he knows, and he hates himself even more for it.

His mom returns to her normal daytime shifts on his fourth day home and Evan knows it’s due to the formal looking letter that had arrived in the post the day before. Her expression had fallen as she’d read it, her teeth worrying her already too short nails, and Evan had known 100% that it was his hospital bill she had received. He’d apologised when she’d looked up to find him watching, and she’d smiled with faux brightness and folded the letter and asked him whatever for before settling on the sofa beside him. She’s sat there until he’d fallen asleep again, her hand absentmindedly teasing his bedraggled, slightly greasy hair, and her eyes fixed on him rather than the tv as it showed yet another re-run of the Great British Bake Off.

She leaves for work later than she normally would though, letting him wake up a little before she gets him up and escorts him down the stairs and tells him not to attempt them when she’s away under any circumstances because he’s not ready for that just yet. Evan agrees, his tone short because although he’s frustrated by, well, all of it, and although he just wants to be better or for it never to have happened or maybe for it not to have failed, he knows he’s still much, much too weak to make attempting a staircase with no one around to catch him if he falls a sensible idea and his mom should trust him not to.

She doesn’t need to fuss after him constantly; she has more important things to do.

It’s very clear she doesn’t want to go to the hospital, though. Her expression is pained and guilty as she says goodbye and checks for the umpteenth time he has everything he needs from upstairs, and Evan, despite himself and his angry, self-loathing heart, kind of understands why. Even he knows he isn’t really meant to be left alone for long just yet and leaving your still injured not-meant-to-be-left-alone son at home alone is probably poor parenting 101.

She’s going because she has to, though, because they need the money.

Now so more than ever.

And so, she goes with a promise to be back as soon as she can and one last reminder to eat, and then, with the click of the door as it locks, Evan is alone, really, properly alone, for the first time in over a week. He isn’t sure he likes it; he’s become almost used to her constant presence, but the guilt in his stomach eases just a little and that’s … that’s something.

There’s a text on his phone when he finally checks it that morning too, one sent the night before from a number not in his contacts. Or not night before, to be precise, at like 3 am, which is odd. The time the message is sent at is more a of mystery than who sent it though, because even though his phone doesn’t know who owns the phone it came from, from the words received, Evan can have a pretty good guess at who has sent them.

**-**Wednesday 21 Aug. 03:23-

**You are alive right?**

Evan blinks at the text, questioning why it has come now, well over a week since he fell, and then how on earth probably-Connor has got hold of his number, before wondering if maybe Connor does actually care after all. Or maybe he’s just curious. Maybe he just wants to know if his effort counted for anything in the end.

Evan still hasn’t decided why Connor has texted when he decides to type out a reply, and he ponders that as he types, as he struggles to input the letters of his first text in weeks on the tiny keyboard with only one working hand.

He manages, sort of, and then sends the reply before he has time to worry about whether he should send it or not or about the spelling because that’s nearly as fucked up as he is. Even autocorrect hasn’t worked it out.

-Wednesday 21 Aug. 11:42-

**Yesj. Thuds os Connor isn’t iy?**

A reply doesn’t come in the few minutes it takes him to make himself a mug of tea and toast a pop tart for lunch, and there still isn’t one when he wakes from an unexpected nap to find Netflix paused and wondering if he’s still there. Since Connor clearly doesn’t care enough to reply, Evan decides that he must have just wanted to check his effort in the forest wasn’t for nothing, but despite his head’s logic, his heart can’t quite shake the hope that Connor cares the text had brought.

Heidi returns to school two days after she had returned to her normal work hours, and then, just as he had before he fell, Evan spends a lot of his time alone. It doesn’t really matter at first, because although he’s lonely, he’s almost too tired to care. Even nearly two weeks after he fell he’s still exhausted, both physically and emotionally, and awfully weak, his body still recovering from the blood loss that had so very nearly killed him, and so he’s still able to do little else other than lay on the sofa and binge watch Netflix in between naps, making the most of the month free trial his mom had insisted on it being the time to use.

She’s home for dinner though, most evenings, and that’s something, and she cooks warm meals and they eat together up the table, and she talks about her day and asks what he’s watched, and he never has much to say, but he enjoys the time they spend together anyway. It also means his mom is eating proper meals again, and her return to day shifts means she’s sleeping too, and she’s going to class, and despite the hospital bill still hanging over their heads, Evan thinks that maybe, just maybe, his fall hasn’t ruined everything entirely.

He’s hopeful.

Tentatively so, but hopeful all the same.

He’s tentatively hopeful about school too, about Connor, because although Connor hadn’t replied to his text, and although he had left when the ambulance arrived, he had stayed, and talked, and he had understood, and that really wasn’t something Evan had expected and he kind of wonders if maybe that might mean something. If maybe, when he starts back at school, he won’t be quite so alone, because there will at least be one other person who understands. And that’s … that’d be wonderful.

He has an appointment with his therapist on the Monday, two weeks to the day after he fell, and for the first time since Heidi brought him home from the hospital, he has to leave the house. He gets more or less properly dressed for the first time since his fall too, in his usual khakis rather than pyjama pants or joggers, along with how now usual too big t-shirt he still struggles to wriggle over his awkward, bulky cast.

As is now standard, he sits on the closed lid of the toilet after dressing, his teeth abusing his lip and his eyes wet and the fingernails of his good hand digging into his palm as he tries to ride out the pain putting on the shirt has caused in the other. When the pain has settled back to its usual ache, he forces his weary body up and eases his bulky, L-shaped arm back in its sling and then brushes his teeth and makes a half-hearted attempt at calming his greasy hair.

He pauses in front of the mirror afterwards to see if any of it has helped him to look any less of the failure he is and finds a sickly sort of boy staring back through thin-framed, plastic glasses. The wide, hazel eyes behind them look hopeless and empty and are surrounded by a deep purple tiredness that stands out in stark contrast to his unhealthily pale skin.

There’s a once stitched, still scabbed cut on his reflection’s bruised forehead and grazing on his cheek and a shadow of the fine stubble on his chin and cheeks and upper lip, and Evan knows if he were to check under the too big clothing partially hidden behind a too blue sling supporting a bulky cast, he’d find more scratches and scrapes and mottled bruising over tender, too visible ribs and an injured right kidney.

Evan kind of wants to cry because he looks almost as much a mess on the outside as he is within.

He doesn’t cry though. He’s much too tired for that.

Despite the argument he’d had with his mom the night before in which he insisted he could take the bus to therapy, Heidi takes the afternoon off work to drive him. He feels guilty, of course he does, but he’s also a little relieved because he isn’t quite sure he’s up to a trip there and back on the bus just yet, and he knows for certain he doesn’t have the strength or stamina to walk.

Recovering is exhausting, he finds, and more than a little frustrating. 

Heidi asks if he wants to stop off at Ellison on the way so he could say thank you to Head Ranger Tom and goodbye to the other junior rangers he had apprenticed for over the summer and collect the few belongings he had left in his locker, and Evan shakes his head and says no no no no no because he doesn’t want to go back there, he doesn’t want to even think about it, and because he doesn’t want them to see how much of a mess he is.

Heidi frowns at his protests and sighs a little and they end up going there anyway so she can collect his belongings and update them on how he’s doing because apparently Tom, who had helped the paramedics reach the GPS location they had obtained from Evan’s phone, had been really quite upset when he’d last seen him. Evan kind of understands why; he knows he hadn’t looked well at the time and a kid dying in your park is never a pleasant situation to come across even if you don’t like the kid all that much.

He stays in the car whilst his mom goes into the centre and waits there with his wide eyes focused on his juddering knees rather than anything out of the window and tries to pretend he’s literally anywhere else.

Heidi asks if he’s okay when she returns to find him with his eyes closed and breathing choppy and his good hand curled into a fist so tight he’s shaped red crescents in his palm, and Evan nods without looking up and says he is and knows she doesn’t believe him at all. She sighs softly and takes his twitchy hand in hers and gives it a squeeze and tell him it’s okay, and after a second, he finds the energy to nod and tell her he knows.

The therapy appointment afterwards kind of helps though, as much as they ever can, and although Evan can say so, so little about how he broke his arm without ending up committed, he thinks maybe Dr Sherman might just suspect his explanation of how he fell isn’t entirely truthful. He’d certainly asked about what happened more times than would be considered necessary to understand that Evan fell.

That he was climbing a tree and the branch broke and he fell.

Because that was what happened really, wasn’t it?

They talk about his time in the hospital though, the good parts and the bad, and then about the week that has followed, his time at home both with his mom and alone, and then he asks how Evan’s feeling about the upcoming new school year.

They discuss when he’s returning to school too, because although Evan wants to go back on the first day, Heidi doesn’t think he’ll be ready. She’s worried he isn’t well enough yet, and although Evan understands why she thinks that, he really, really doesn’t want to be the kid who starts back late with a bruise on their head and a cast on their arm and gets stared at in the corridor because they very clearly have a story to tell.

Maybe he wouldn’t have argued so much about returning late if he could wait long enough for the bruises to heal and the scar to fade and the cast to be removed from his arm, but he’s very sure Heidi wouldn’t allow him the months off broken bones takes to heal, so, he’d set his heart on going back on time instead, on styling his mousy hair to hide the scar as best he can and hoping no one pays him enough attention to mention the cast on his aching broken arm.

Dr Sherman agrees with Heidi though, it turns out, says it might be better if Evan has a little more time to recover, both physically and not, before going back. He had very, very nearly died little over two weeks ago after all.

Evan pouts more than a little sulkily and tells him he’s fine and receives a look in return that tells him his therapist doesn’t entirely agree.

The session ends when the clock strikes four, and Evan leaves exhausted both emotionally and physically and a little irritated about Dr Sherman agreeing with his mom, but with a mildly lighter heart and a hopefulness about the start of school he hasn’t had in a while. Most of it is to do with Connor, he’ll admit, but a little has come from the encouraging words of Dr Sherman.

He leaves with homework too, a task they’re discussed before but never followed through with, because Dr Sherman has decided that it may help him if he focuses on the positives in life, on why it has been a good day or why it will be. And so, he’s been asked to write the good points down every day, to find them when he might not have noticed them before, and tell them to himself, make himself aware.

‘_Dear Evan Hansen_,’ he’s supposed to write, ‘_Today is going to be a good day, and here’s why._’.

He tries a letter Tuesday morning at his mom’s insistence, and he realises very quickly that a) typing with an arm that’s casted from armpit to knuckles isn’t even slightly possible, and b) there is very, very little in his life that could mean it is going to be a good day. He stares at the blank Word document instead of typing, the fingers of his right hand poised but mind void of positives until his head hurts and his eyes blur with both tiredness and tears and his choppy breathing starts to catch wetly in his throat.

He takes a Xanax and a couple of painkillers and afterwards, he sleeps.

He wakes to eat lunch and then manages to stare at the TV whilst a few episodes of White Collar play before he decides it’s time for his afternoon nap. He sleeps a lot during the day, he knows, maybe more than he ought to, but nothing hurts when he’s asleep and his thoughts can’t flounder if he isn’t even conscious.

Heidi wakes him for dinner.

She asks about the letter as they eat and tries to hide the inevitable disappointment in her eyes when he dejectedly tells her he has failed yet again. Why wouldn’t he though.

Failing is what he does best.

She leaves for work soon afterwards with an ‘I love you’ and an encouraging ‘Have another go’ in reference to his letter.

Even nods and agrees.

He sleeps instead.

Wednesday dawns bright and sunny, a contrast to the darkness in Evans heart when he remembers Heidi is taking the day off for the sole reason of taking him back to the hospital for a check-up. Or two check-ups, really, one for his kidney, and another for his arm, and in between the two, she takes him out for lunch as though he needs anything else to feel guilty about. She chatters warmly, about work and school and her plan to cook tacos for dinner and about the mysteries of Stranger Things, the episodes of which she has been watching with him in the snippets of time between work and dinner and school. It’s a good show, she likes it and he likes it too, but he’s tiring, both emotionally and physically, and between that and the slight high caused by the painkillers he’s almost worryingly reliant on and the worry that she is again missing work, he finds himself struggling to keep up with the conversation.

His doctors had been happy with his progress though, the first smiling as she informed him that his kidney, although still recovering, is on its way to being fully healed, and after lunch the second had nodded in approval at his X-rays before calling in someone to remove the stitching and recast his arm. They’re gentle as they apply the fiberglass, this time only from knuckles to elbow, but it hurts, and Evan, still in pain and drifting on the shot of morphine he’d been given, takes himself to bed once they’re home.

It doesn’t really matter that he sleeps before dinner, it turns out, because his mom gets called in to work just after they get home, and after bringing him a pillow to rest his new cast on and a bag of frozen peas when she realises he’s hurting, she leaves for the hospital, guilt on her expression and an apology on her lips.

Evan wonders how long it’ll take for this to become the norm again.

He writes a letter on the Thursday morning, then deletes it because the few sentences it contains are not of the positive pep talk variety that Dr Sherman thinks he needs to write.

He tries again in the afternoon and ends up with a short piece of writing filled with phoney positivity that he can at least show his mother when she returns home for dinner.

In the end, she doesn’t, she apologises profusely over the phone and then goes straight from work to school, and so the letter and the effort is all for nothing.

Evan deletes it and takes himself to bed soon after she calls to tell him.

He finds himself walking to the park on the Friday, the one just a few blocks down from his house.

It’s surprisingly busy there, he finds when he creaks his way through the entrance gate, with children enjoying the last few days of the holidays on the swings and slides and running after balls or each other, and teenagers too. Most are in groups, chatting in lazy circles on the scorched summer grass, but a few are alone, reading in the shade of the trees or walking with earphones in and music playing, content in their own unique worlds. There are parents there too, some chatting to others on benches and others alone, watching their children play with weary, end of holidays smiles. A few have their eyes on the screens of their phones, the children ignored as they play.

There are adults without children enjoying the fine summer weather too, some alone, and some in couples, and a few with dogs. One man looks as though he should have a dog, judging by the empty lead in his hand and the frustrated gaze he is pulling at a particularly energetic patch of undergrowth.

Evan, satisfied to find company he can see but doesn’t need to talk to after weeks of near solitude, crosses the field on tired legs until he’s under an old, still mostly green sweet chestnut and then half sits, half falls to the floor beneath it. He ends up leaning back against the trunk of the tree, the back of his skull against the bark and his face to the sky as he catches his breath.

The day is warm and the air gentle and a little muggy, but neither makes the heat of the sun against his still too pale skin any less enjoyable. The song of the blue birds in the still-green chestnut spreading its branches high above him is pretty perfect too.

He closes his eyes, a small, content smile on his lips, exhausted from the walk but pleased he’s come all the same. He very nearly hadn’t, having woken with a heart mildly lightened, by what he doesn’t know, that had soon after been weighted by a small, hurriedly written note on the kitchen counter from him mom, explaining she had been called to work early to cover a suddenly missing Sandra, and would likely not be home until after dinner. The note ended with a reminder to eat and write a letter, and, as usual, an ‘I love you, mom xx’.

He’d almost taken himself back to bed at that, knowing no one would know or care if he slept away the day, but in the end he hadn’t, he’d made himself a coffee he probably shouldn’t have, and drank it slowly, and then decided he would go for a walk. He wasn’t really sure why he’d decided that, even the stairs still felt like a mountainous hike, and he wasn’t really all that sure going out alone was a good idea, or even something he was meant to do, not yet anyway.

But it was something he used to do.

Walking was his escape, it had been for years, walking and trees and nature, they were what he enjoyed, what made him _him_, and after weeks of laying around doing very little and not feeling much like himself at all, it suddenly felt like the thing to do. So, he took the clingfilm from the cupboard, and wrapped his arm, and then showered and shaved and brushed his teeth and swapped his glasses for his usual contact lenses and changed into his khakis and a soft, well-worn blue polo-shirt and somehow, after that, he’d felt a little more like himself than he had since he’d woken up in hospital what felt like months ago.

He still didn’t look quite like himself; his reflections stared back with tired, empty eyes and pale skin and a scabbed scar surrounded by yellow bruising high on his forehead, but it looked 1000 times better than it had that first time he’d seen it in the hospital. It was getting there.

He was getting there.

He’s feeling a better in himself too, the effects of the concussion and exhaustion of the blood loss finally diminishing, leaving him more awake, his thoughts more ordered, his brain a little faster, and although that leaves more time for thinking, more time to be awake with only his own sometimes, often, dark thoughts for company, it’s a relief after spending weeks struggling to coordinating his brain into even thinking in a straight line.

It’s a relief that his mom is back properly at work and school too, even if it does leave him home alone, his heart aching in loneliness but his gut at least not drowning in guilt. He’s still swimming in it though, it’s still there, swirling nauseatingly when a bill arrives in the post or when he finds his mom at the table frowning over bank statements as she tries to solve the puzzle of how to pay for rent and food and electricity and save for the new boiler and settle the minimum sum demanded of his hospital bill with only enough money for three.

He wants to help, to get a job, to cover the extra worry he has added to their financial enigma, but he knows Heidi won’t let him work over the school year, and he knows she wouldn’t accept money from him even if he could. He’s already tried with his meagre earnings from the shifts he worked at the park before he fell from a tree and got them into this mess.

He wants to help, but he can’t, he’s just a burden, as usual.

Maybe.

Maybe she really would have been better off without him.

Evan shakes the thought from his head.

He considers the branches above him instead, notes how high they are, how fragile, how usually, he would have climbed the tree and sat amongst the leaves rather than below. He can’t do that now, he hasn’t the strength, and he isn’t all that sure he trusts himself enough any more either. It isn’t as if he had been planning to fall the first time.

Not that one can plan to fall.

The branch broke, after all.

The branch broke and he fell.

The branch-

“This is bit Daija-vu, isn’t it?”

Evan’s eyes snap open at the familiar voice to find Connor Murphy standing before him, his towering form dark against the blue of the cloudless sky. He isn’t smiling, his expression instead twisted and nervous and unsure. Anxious, even, not like Evan scale of anxious, that’s a whole new ball game, but as though he isn’t all that sure he should be having this conversation at all. It’s as though he’s testing the water, seeing what will happen if he dips a toe, seeing what happens if he tries talking to the mess of the boy whose life he saved. 

Evan blinks at him, mind reeling because Connor is there -why is he there and why is Connor talking to him when he couldn’t even be bothered to reply- before he finally realises what Connor has said and tries to decipher the meaning behind the words.

It’s a joke, he thinks, not like a joke joke, but an inside joke, maybe. He tries to play along, summon words from his suddenly empty brain, but just ends up opening his mouth, then closing it again as he tries for words he cannot initially find. 

“Oh, well, um, no, not quite,” he manages to stutter a few painful seconds later. “This is a sweet chestnut-” he indicates the tree he’s under with a suddenly sweaty right hand, “-And that was an oak, so, um …” A nervous sort of shrug jolts his shoulders.

Connor nods once, his head tilted a little, his expression unreadable. “And you’re not dying.” His addition is blunt, joltingly candid, but not said to hurt. At least, Evan doesn’t think it is. He isn’t all that sure though, he isn’t good at this. At people. He hides from people. Runs. Except-

“Oh, yeah, um, that’s- that’s true,” he stammers instead of running, because Connor is Connor and Connor understands, maybe, and because he’s meant to be making an effort, after all.

Or maybe he shouldn’t.

Part of doesn’t want to, after all.

Part of him wants to run because Connor knows what he tried to do, what really happened, and Evan doesn’t want to even think about that let along talk about it and that’s probably the sort of thing Connor is going to want to talk about because who wouldn’t have something to say to a boy they found dying on the floor of a forest after a messily failed suicide attempt.

It’s the sort of thing Evan should talk about too, really, with his mom or his therapist or probably a psychiatrist in a hospital ward made for people like him if he’s being honest with himself, but he doesn’t think he can. No. He knows he can’t.

He couldn’t do it to himself.

He couldn’t do it to his mom.

But Connor is here and talking to him and probably wants to talk about what Evan really doesn’t want to talk about and that’s making his chest tight and his breathing uneven and his heart flutter and his hands sweaty and twitchy and shake as they shred the hem of his polo.

“I didn’t think you’d remember,” Connor interrupts the reeling of his brain. His words are curious but uncomfortable, fearful even, somehow and Evan doesn’t really understand why, but then, there’s a lot about people he doesn’t understand.

He isn’t good at people.

He knows the answer to Connor question though, so he swallows his rising panic and tries to calm his spasming lungs and racing heart and forces an explanation from his lips.

“Oh, I don’t, not- not much anyway. It’s- it’s like, hazy? I just … you were there, you, um, you stayed. I can’t really remember what happened, though.”

Connor nods, spring-tight poster relaxing just a little.

Evan doesn’t really understand his apparent relief either.

He shuffles uncomfortably, dreading the questions he’s sure are coming, the questions he can’t can’t can’t answer, and then, in a moment of inspiration, asks his own instead. “So, um, how are you?”

“Me?” Connor coughs a laugh, an eyebrow raised. “Why are you asking about me?”

Evan finds his gaze flitting back to his restless hands as he almost instinctively mutters an apology because he can’t really explain to Connor that his question was half distraction method and half concern because he understands that Connor is nearly as messed up as he is.

He can almost feel Connor’s eyes on him, and when, after a moment nothing more gets said, he chances a glance up. A curious look passes Connor’s expression, and his head tilts a little, eyebrows furrowed, before he rather abruptly drops to the floor, ending up sat cross legged on the grass in a sudden tangle of gangly limbs. It doesn’t look overly comfortable.

“I’m okay,” he says, tone less angry, almost cautious again. “Been better, been worse. Not looking forwards to school starting again.”

“Oh, um,” Evan starts, caught out but the sudden reply and almost dizzy with relief as the conversation shifts away from himself and the topic he was sure he wouldn’t be able to avoid. He forces his brain to follow it. “You- you don’t like school?”

“Does anyone?”

Evan shrugs jerkily. He does, in a way, he likes the lessons, some of them, and he likes the routine, something to do during the days other than sit alone at home or wander the park. He doesn’t like the people though, the reminder that in a world filled to bursting, he’s still so utterly alone.

It sort of surprises him when Connor speaks again. 

“Well, I guess I don’t mind it, sometimes, depends.”

“On?”

“People mostly. Lessons sometimes, but like, if I don’t want to go, I won’t. Just means more arguments with mom. And Fucking Larry, but like, whatever. He hates me whatever I do, so.” He shrugs nonchalantly, as though fighting with his dad doesn’t bother him. Maybe it doesn’t, Evan can’t really remember what Connor had said about his family back in the forest, he just remembers his distress when he spoke about them, about Zoe, and the patterns on his arms, and a surge of pain and concern not related to himself at all.

Connor’s arms are bear now, the sleeves of his faded dark t-shirt pushed up to his elbows in an attempt to combat the last of the August heat. They’re still patterned, but Evan realises the scarring is old, healed. More healed than Connor’s relationship with his parents, it seems.

“Do you actually call him that?” he asks, only half forcing the conversation along.

“What? Fucking Larry?” Connor smirks. “Not to his face. Not often anyway.”

Evan’s eyebrows flit towards his hairline and Connor laughs. It’s a surprisingly light sound. Warm too. It chases a little of the tension from Evan’s chest and brings a tired but honest smile to his bitten lips.

“That’s, um-"

“Stupid?”

“I was going to say brave, actually. I don’t think I’d have the courage to call my dad, um, that, or not that but-”

“Fucking Mark?” Conner suggests, his own eyebrows raised and a smirk on his lips.

Evan chokes on his own inhale. He isn’t all that sure he remembers telling Connor Mark’s name, but apparently, he has.

“Um, yes, that,” he wheezes eventually, feeling a little awkward at the thought of calling his father that but also, somehow, a fraction lighter than he has in a while. “I’m surprised you remembered.”

“Your dad’s name or that he’s a dick?”

“Oh, well, both, I guess. I meant his name, though.”

Connor shrugs. “It’s your name,” he says as though that explains it.

Evan says nothing for a long moment. He doesn’t remember telling Connor that either. He guesses it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t remember a lot of his time in the forest in any sort of detail. Shock, they tell him, and an effect of the concussion.

“Not really,” he objects quietly in answer to Connor’s statement. “I don’t think anyone has ever actually called me that except my grandma, like dad’s mom, but um, I haven’t seen her since before dad left, so ...”

Connor nods once, expression pensive. “He’s still a dick though.”

Evan pauses, swallows, summons his pitiful courage,

“Do you- do you often tell people their dads are dicks?”

Connor shrugs, apparently oblivious to his anxiety. There’s a small, tired curl to his lips. “I, son of a shitty father, know a shitty father when I see one, Hansen. Or hear of one, anyway, I guess.”

“Oh, I see. I mean, I’m not sure my dad’s shitty, he’s just, not here. Like he pays mom what he’s meant to and- and I think he’s a pretty good dad to his new kids?” Evan explains, his brow furrowed in thought. He hasn’t heard much about his dad’s new kids, only short snippets sent in texts at holidays, and even those have stopped in recent years. They always sounded positive though, in a way Mark had never sounded about his first son.

Evan doesn’t normally mind hugely, he doesn’t remember much of his dad so he doesn’t exactly miss him, but it still stings to know that the man could so easily abandon his first wife and child, that they had meant so little to him.

“That still sounds pretty shitty to me,” Connor argues, and there’s a grimace on his lips as though he’s tasting something bad. He has a point though, Evan knows.

“Maybe,” he agrees quietly, and finds his gaze falling to his lap, ending up on the stark white cast that’s rested there. The skin beneath is itchy from the heat and arm inside it aches, unimpressed with being released from its sling and the pain not masked by the stronger painkillers he usually takes but hasn’t. He doesn’t want to take them when he’s at school, and now seems as good a time as any to stop.

“So, um, how are you?”

Evan’s head snaps up again at Connor’s words, soft and filled with a genuine care beside the teasing tone. It takes him a moment that they’re his own words, repeated from earlier that conversation.

“I’m fine.”

Connor huffs a laugh. “You’re still a shitty liar.”

Evan finds his eyes dropping back to his lap. He forces his thumbnail away from an already loosening thread of fiberglass. “Oh. I am, though. Okay, that is, not a bad liar. I’m just- just tired. But like, I’m always tired, now, and um, well, and before too, actually, but more so now.”

A moment passes, not awkward but thoughtful.

“Honestly, you still look pretty shit.”

Evan looks up from his cast, finding Connor’s mismatched eyes watching him curiously. His expression is soft to match his tone. He looks almost concerned too.

“Ugh, thanks?”

Connor rolls his eyes. “You know what I mean.”

Evan does know what he means, he’s seen his own too pale, sunken eyed reflection in the mirror, and after a moment, he realises arguing further isn’t really going to help.

“I, um, my kidney was bleeding, and I lost a lot of blood, and it’s- well, I’m- um, I’m pale now, I guess. It’s why I’m tired too, kind of,” he admits, and Connor looks at him for a moment, his expression a little pensive, and then nods as though he knows.

“Hypovolemic shock? That’s why you kept passing out.”

Evan frowns at Connors words because why does he know that, but then shakes the thought from his head. It isn’t exactly important, is it?

“Ugh, yeah- yeah, it, um, it got pretty close, actually,” he finds himself admitting. “They- they said I was lucky. The doctors.”

“Do you think you were?” Connor asks, tone a little curious, and his eyes are serious when Evan lifts his to meet them. “Do you think you were lucky?”

“I- um, I …” he breaks off, not knowing what to say at all. What’s even the right answer to that question?

It was a minor miracle that he survived his fall, he knows, the doctors had told him so at the hospital, told him how lucky he was to have hit enough branches on his way down to slow his decent before he hit the floor, lucky that his arm had taken the brunt of his landing rather than his head, lucky that his brain and neck and spine and chest had all been relatively okay, lucky that his kidney had been bleeding slowly enough that he hadn’t died from internal bleeding right there on the floor of the forest.

They said he was lucky that someone had been there to find him.

But Connor has a point, Evan knows, because whether he can consider himself lucky or not really depends on what he wanted the outcome of the fall to be, and even he isn’t sure on that. On one hand life’s an awful lot of effort and filled with loneliness and guilt and anxiety and so not hugely enjoyable, and also kind of pointless, because after all that effort, you die, and then you don’t remember any of it anyway. But on the other, well, on the other he’s alive, when he very nearly wouldn’t be, and that has to count for something, right?

“Can we not talk about this?” he ends saying instead of explaining, the words almost wheezed from a suddenly too tight chest, and Connor looks at him for a moment before shrugging.

“Whatever,” he says, like Evan’s just said he doesn’t want to talk the weather or a TV show or what he’s having for dinner rather than the fact that Connor had found him passed out and dying on the floor of a forest after not-quite-falling from a tree. A weight lifts in his chest a Connor agreement though, the tension in his posture loosening just a little more as the possibility of an incoming assault of questions he really doesn’t want to answer is lessened.

Connor seems oblivious to his internal turmoil, too busy unfolding himself from the knot of limbs he had only recently become. He stretches out on his back on the dry grass and folds his arms beneath his head as a pillow in a posture more relaxed than Evan thinks he would ever be capable of. His scuffed boots, one crossed over the other at his ankle, end up beside Evans bent knees, the tip of the left one close enough the thin fabric of his khakis laps at the worn leather in the gentle gusts of summer breeze.

Evan is surprisingly somewhat comfortable too, he realises after a moment, more comfortable with Connor than he had expected to be despite the fear of questions still hanging over his head, and he realises that maybe his unexpected ease has something to do with Connor already have seen him when he was at his lowest. He can’t worry about saying something wrong when he couldn’t possibly make himself seem any more of a mess than he was when he was laying semi-conscious on the grass below the tallest tree in Ellison State Park. 

“You mind if I smoke?” Connor asks after a moment, mismatched eyes flicking down from the canopy to catch Evan’s hazel. 

“Oh, um, no?”

“Cool.” He pushes himself up on an elbow and fishes a roll-up cigarette and a yellow plastic lighter from his pocket, lighting it from his odd, propped up position before laying back down to smoke it. He inhales, and exhales, and Evan wrinkles his nose at the smell.

“That’s not a cigarette.”

Connor glances at him from his back, a teasing grin on his lips. “I thought we’d already established I smoke smoking drugs,” he quips, and Evan frowns because what Connor is referring to is lost on him. He nods slowly instead, and then leans back against the tree, looking up at the still green canopy above him and the blueness of the sky above that. He could do with a nap, he realises, which doesn’t really bode well for his upcoming return to school.

“So, why are you here?” Connor asks after another drag.

“Oh, um, I live nearby.”

“You come here often?”

“I used to. This is my first time in a while, though.”

“Why?”

Evan shrugs. “I was working at the park for most of the summer, and then, um, well this is the first time out on my own since, you know. I’m not really sure I’m meant to be here if I’m honest but, like, I haven’t really left the house in weeks now except for appointments and, it was getting a bit, um …”

“Monotonous? Depressing? Completely and utterly soul crushing?” Connor suggests in quick succession, glancing questioningly over.

“Something like that.” Evan finds a smile on his lips as he nods, his hair ruffling against the bark. It’s getting long, he realises, not nearly as long as Connor’s, but certainly longer than he likes to wear it. It’s curlier than it normally is too, the fluffy loose ringlets forming due to both the length and the lack of care as they had done when he was younger. 

“So, um, what about you?”

“Eh.” Connor shrugs and takes a drag. “Escaping home.”

“Do you live nearby too?”

“Oh, no, I live down Fairfield Road.”

Evan frowns, lost, and Connor must notice because he continues. “It’s over the other side of town. Near the hospital.”

“Oh, where the posh houses are?” he asks without thinking before, after just a fraction of a second, realising what he’s said. His cheeks flush hotly as he regrets the words that had left his bitten lips more so than he normally does. “Sorry.”

Connor rolls his eyes and Evan can’t work out if he’s rolling them at his answer or the apology that had followed. “Yeah, there.”

“So, um, why are you here?”

Connor raises his hand pointedly. Smoke winds upwards from his fingers. “Zoe found my stash, and this park has good shit.”

Evan focuses on not allowing his eyebrows to fly towards his hairline. “They sell drugs here?” He scans the park searching for anything out of the ordinary. Connor chuckles, at him, Evan knows, but it doesn’t sound nasty.

“You’re so fucking innocent.” His eyes are lightly crinkled with amusement.

Evan hums noncommittally, knowing it’s true but not wanting to admit it, and picks at a thread of cotton on his hem before forcing himself to stop. “So, um, are your parents home in the day? Like if you’re trying to escape the house?”

Connor looks a little surprised at the change in direction of the conversation. He draws on his cigarette before he answers. Or not cigarette, actually. Joint, maybe?

“Mom is, Larry’s at work. And Zoe’s … somewhere.” He frowns in thought then shrugs. “She’s not at home anyway.”

Evan nods and then hums in thought, his expression twisting in question. “Doesn’t she work?”

“Zoe?”

“No, your mom.”

“Oh, nah,” Connor pauses, inhales and then blows smoke into the air. “I wish she did though.” The words are offhand, a little bitter, maybe.

A moment passes. Evan watches the smoke dissipate. His expression is wrinkled at more than just the smell.

“Mine does, a lot.”

Connor glances up at him, his expression a little apologetic, a little guilty. It’s an odd look on him, not suiting his long hair and dark clothes and the joint between long pale finger ending chipped black nails.

“Sorry.”

Evan shrugs and looks away and tilts his head to the sky again. The sun is warm. A soft breeze rustles the still-green leaves. A young girl shrieks in delight as her father pushes her so high on the swing the chain briefly slackens.

“It’s nice out here.”

Connor hums in agreement. He draws a drag. The smoke is taken by the wind.

A thought crosses Evan’s mind.

“How did you get my number?”

Connor smiles at the sky. “I wondered if you’d ask.”

“That … wasn’t an answer.”

“No,” he agrees, glancing over. “But it’s as much as you’re going to get.”

“Why?”

A teasing smirk grows on Connor’s lips. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

Evan rolls his eyes to the canopy above him and sighs in only semi-mock frustration. “You’re not a magician. You’re like, I don’t know, a really low-key data thief or something.”

“Hey, no theft was involved,” Connor protests lazily. “My methods are much more sophisticated than that.”

“Sophisticated? I’m like 99 % sure you just asked someone.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Definitely maybe. I just-” he pauses in thought, wracking his brain and his mental contacts book. “I can’t work out who you could have got it from? Like … not many people … Jared maybe? Was it Jared?”

Connor fixes him a look of disbelief and scoffs in disgust. “_Kleinman_?”

“Okay, okay, stupid suggestion.” He thinks again, watching Connor as he lays on his back wearing a satisfied sort of smile and taking the occasional drag on his joint. He looks calm and relaxed and more than a little amused. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Evan sighs eventually, unable to solve the riddle of who else from school who might possibly talk to Connor has his number. It’s a similar puzzle to the one on who else from school has his number, period, he realises, which is more than a little sad. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Connor chuckles lightly and smiles at the branches above but says nothing to answer the question.

Evan sighs and leans his head back against the tree. He can’t quite decide if Connor won’t tell him his source because they’ve asked him not to or simply because he thinks it’s funny, but he finds he doesn’t really mind all that much either way. Half of his indifference is because he’s mostly sure Connor isn’t doing it really out of spite, and half because he really doesn’t actually mind someone giving out his number. He’s more just a little confused over who, other than Jared, has it.

“I finished Harry Potter again.”

It takes Evan a good second to return from his thoughts and process what Connor had said and a few more to understand why he’s telling him that.

“Was it good?”

“Of course. I kind of wish I could read it for the first time again, though, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that.”

A moment passes, and then Connor props himself up on one elbow. “You never told you what house you were in.” He stabs the end of the roll-up out on the grass, and then places it cautiously on a dry patch of dirt. Evan watches him, and then closes his eyes again. He’s trying to remember the conversation they’d had in the forest. It doesn’t really work.

He does vaguely remember talking about the books though, about reading, and so he assumes they must have talked about houses too, or Connor must have asked anyway, even if it seems Evan hadn’t answered. He briefly wonders if he’d just asked for something to say to keep him awake or f he actually wanted to know, but either way it seems there’s some genuine curiosity behind the question now.

“Oh, didn’t I.”

Connor rolls his mismatched, slightly pink eyes.

“You still haven’t.”

Evan’s lips twitch at Connor’s tone. He tilts his face up towards the sun. “What’s yours?”

“Why should I tell if you won’t?”

Evan opens his eyes to find Connor frowning up at the sky. “Fair point,” he agrees despite his curiosity. There isn’t really a reason he hasn’t told Connor his own house, he’s a little unsure about it, sure, not entirely certain it suits him, but he more hasn’t said just because Connor seemed to find it a little frustrating that he doesn’t know just as Evan finds it a little frustrating Connor won’t answer his question about his cell number.

Connor hums in agreement, then sighs. “I’m Gryffindor, if you actually care. _I_ have nothing to hide.” He glances over, his eyebrows raised pointedly.

Evan nods thoughtfully, ignoring the jab. “Yeah, I can see that.”

“Really?”

“For sure.” He rests his head back against the trunk, and Connor returns his gaze to the sky. He shuffles, folding his hands behind his head.

“Zoe used to say I was a Slytherin,” he says, almost to himself.

“Anything wrong with that?”

Connor glances over, expression curious. “No. I guess not.”

Evan hums, and closes his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun against his face. A second passes, comfortable, before a thought flits through his tired mind.

“So, Snape; good or bad?” he asks, the words lazy and directed at the sky and more to keep the conversation going than anything else, and Connor, an lightly amused grin on his lips, launches into a surprisingly in-depth analysis of the Severus Snape and then on to Slughorn and Dumbledore. Evan listens, of course, and he adds his own thoughts occasionally and hums in agreement when he needs to, but the sun is warm, and the tree is surprisingly comfortable to lean against and he’s beginning to get really quite drowsy. It’s the latest in the day he’s got without a nap he realises. His eyelids close, and then, evantually, Connor’s voice stops too.

“You asleep?”

“Hmmm?” Evan blinks open heavy eyes, to find Connor up on one elbow, an amused frown on his brow. “Oh, no, I’m good. It’s nice out here”

“You’ve said that already.”

“Hmm, well, it is,” Evan retorts, a little defensively.

Connor rolls his eyes and falls back to the floor. “Yeah, it is.” A moment passes. “You were definitely asleep though.”

“I wasn’t!”

“Liar.”

Evan sighs; he can’t really argue because he isn’t all that sure he wasn’t asleep, and he doesn’t really have the energy to either. “I think, um, I think this is the latest I’ve got in the day without a nap,” he admits instead.

“Shit, really?”

Evan nods, head rolling against the trunk. He opens his mouth to say something but ends up yawning instead.

Connor laughs. “Go home, Hansen.”

“Maybe,” Evan agrees, grimacing both at the thought of leaving the first company he’s had in a while and the suddenly long walk home. He can’t exactly not walk home though, and he’s more than aware he’s getting to the bottom of his depleted energy reserve, so he pushes himself a little more upright against the tree and then rubs his heavy eyes, wiping the gritty sleep from the corners.

“Definitely.”

He rolls his eyes, then after taking a moment to summon his motivation, pushes himself to his feet. His balance faulters a little when he stands, his head light, and he has to steady himself on the trunk. Connor jumps to his feet very suddenly too, a hand out as though to catch him if he falls and Evan can’t quite work out how he feels about that.

He starts towards the gates at the edge of the field, and Connor follows. For a minute, they walk across the field in silence, their paces slow and ambling. It’s pleasant, and Evan is almost sad to be going home. It’s kind of ironic the thing he did that lead to his new companionship is also what is forcing it to end.

“When are you coming back to school?”

“Hmm?” Evan asks, only afterwards realising what Connor had asked him. “Oh, Monday.”

“Monday?”

“Yeah?”

“Like, as in three days away?” Connor’s frowning at him, his expression a little confused. It takes Evan a moment to understand why. He knows’ he doesn’t exactly seem ready to go back to school, but he can’t miss the start of the year, he can’t deal with turning up late. People will wonder why. They’re already going to stare at the cast on his arm and the faded bruise on his forehead and the unhealthy pallor of his skin.

“Yeah. Mom doesn’t really want me to, but …” he breaks off with a shrug. “It’s not like I’m ill or anything.”

“Just tired.”

“Yeah.”

A ball crosses their path, rolling idly over the bumpy grass and Connor breaks into a lazy jog after it, stopping it with a foot and then kicking it back to a group of small children playing a little way across the field. Their game is rudimentary, a rubber, Mario themed ball and jumpers piled in place of goal posts, but they all cheer as the ball returns. A father calls his thanks and Connor mimes a lazy salute in thanks before jogging back to Evan.

They walk in silence a little longer, watching the dogs run and the children play games both sensical and not, and then rather abruptly, they’re at the gates.

“I’ll give you a lift home,” Connor announces, and indicates towards a smallish blue car parked in the row alongside the fence. It’s surprisingly new, newer than Heidi’s, much so. But then, Connor does live in the posh part of town, so he guesses they can afford it. 

“Oh, no, I’m okay, I can walk, it isn’t far,” Evan automatically declines before another thought crosses his mind. “You’re, um, you’re driving?”

Connor frowns, a little confused, and holds up the set of keys he’s fished from his pocket. It’s an empty sort of set, just a car key, the fancy sort with buttons to press, and a copper coloured key that looks as though it could unlock a front door, and a longish, blue, crystal shaped keyring. It looks to almost be glowing. It’s still a larger set than Evan’s though, he just has a house key attached to a cheap plastic tag with ‘Evan’ written on in his mom’s hurried handwriting.

“Yeah?”

“Oh. Um, I thought …” he trails off, courage lost, social anxiety winning the battle with worry that Connor is driving whilst quite possibly high. Well, whilst definitely high, but Evan has no idea at all how high it’s okay for him to get before driving becomes a really stupid idea. You can drink a little and still drive, after all.

Connor’s brow furrows, before he sighs, seeming to catch on and frowning in sudden irritation.

“I don’t need you judging me too, Hansen,” he snaps, tone suddenly abrupt, abrasive. Defensive, maybe. It’s nasty, almost, a world away from the Connor who had stood beside him moments before.

Evan recoils, hands raising automatically in minuscule surrender. “No, no, I- um, I wasn’t judging. I just … is that- um, is it safe?”

Connor looks at him for a second before he laughs.

Evan can’t tell if it’s meant to be mean or not. His eyes find the floor and his anxious fingers the hem of his shirt.

“Fuck, Hansen. That sentence was a fucking train wreck.”

“I know. I, um, yeah. Yeah, it was.” He runs a trainer through the dusty gravel of the car park.

Connor nods, eyebrows slightly furrowed, and then, a moment later, he sighs. “Yeah, though, it’s safe. I’m okay.”

“Oh. Good.” Evan glances up a little, finds Connor through his lashes.

“Yep.” He pops the ‘P’. “You sure you’re okay to walk?”

There’s genuine concern in his tone, and that’s … that’s warming, but Evan finds himself rolling his eyes anyway. “Yes!” he almost snaps, a little irritated because there’s only so long he can be treated like an invalid, and he’s really reaching that limit. His mom is trying to help, and so is Connor, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. It also doesn’t help that he really, really doesn’t want to think about why he’s in need of their help. About why he’s even more of a burden than normal.

Connor nods, looking half about to argue before apparently thinking better of it. “Okay. See you Monday, then,” he says almost abruptly, and before Evan has had time to reply he’s turned away towards the row of cars beside the fence. 

“Oh, yeah, see you then,” Evan calls after him, and Connor turns briefly back and gives a small wave. Evan waves too, and then turns on his heel and starts the short but-still-longer-than-he-would-like-it-to-be walk back to his empty house. He’s tired and feeling more than a little weak and his arm is sore and itchy inside its cast and his head is starting to ache again, but what Evan realises as he walks is that none of that matters as much as he thought it would because his heavy, weary heart is perhaps a little warmer, a little lighter than it had been when he had left the house little over two hours ago and as he walks, he decides that maybe, just maybe, today might have actually been a pretty good day after all.


	5. Hope: Misplaced

The first day of school dawns, and Evan finds himself awake and dressed and ready to go long before he needs to be. Most of it is due to his anxiety, his eddying brain stressing over what may or may not happen on the first day back and of seeing Jared and Zoe and Connor, but part of it is due to him mom having decided she’s giving him a lift meaning he doesn’t need to leave nearly as early as he does when he walks.

He ends up waiting on his bed for it to be time to go, sat with his laptop on his knees as he types out one of the letters he’s got into a vague routine of writing over the past few days. The letters still aren’t all that easy to type both because he isn’t the most positive of people, understatement of the century, and because of the cast bracing his broken left arm. The new one is smaller and lighter than the one it replaced and his elbow is free to move now so typing is longer entirely impossible, but it still makes the angle odd and he keeps leaning the edge of the fiberglass on the keys by mistake and filling his letters with lines of characters he doesn’t meant to type. Typing hurts, too, he finds, but not enough to go back to taking the stronger painkillers he’s finally been able to stop.

The letters don’t actually help all that much either because, with the exception of Friday evening’s, writing them has just made him realise how little positivity he has in his life, how much time he spends alone. It doesn’t help that he’s writing them for his mom because she thinks it’ll help him, fix him, and most evenings she isn’t even there to ask if he’s done one. It makes writing them a little pointless, just like everything else.

Today’s is a little different though, he thinks, firstly because he’s actually attempting it at the start of the day like he’s meant to rather than just writing about the mainly negative things that have happened, and secondly because today’s might just be considered hopeful.

Or parts are anyway, some sentences about school certainly are, because, maybe, just maybe, he won’t be quite so alone this year.

“So, you just decided not to eat last night?”

Evan startles and closes his laptop with a snap.

There’s a concerned, slightly frustrated frown on his mom’s lips as she stands in his doorway, her scrubs vibrant against the magnolia walls, and a crumpled twenty dollar bill held in her left hand. It’s almost certainly the one she had left on the kitchen counter the night before beside the note she’d written telling him to make sure he ate.

“Oh, I’m- um, I wasn’t hungry,” Evan mumbles in explanation, averting his gaze. That hadn’t quite been entirely the truth, he hadn’t exactly been not hungry, but with pre first-day nerves churning in his gut and his anxiety already reaching breaking point, ordering food he didn’t think he’d even be able to stomach really didn’t seem worth the effort. He’d gone to bed instead, spent his evening laying in the dark, his mind too busy to sleep but his body too exhausted to do little else.

He’d taken himself for a haircut that afternoon whilst his mom had been at work because, although he isn’t a fan of haircuts, he’d needed to fix his too long hair before school started. The walk to the bus stop and back had been hot and tiring, and the haircut stressful, and the bus ride itself noisy and overcrowded and almost entirely overwhelming, and by the time he’d made it home, he’d been stressed enough that he’d needed to take one of the pills in the chest beside his bed, his shaking, sweaty hands struggling with the safety cap and the cast not helping in the slightest. He’d napped afterwards, worn by the stress and anxiety and business of the day and drowsy from the extra dose of Xanax.

He’d argued with Heidi when she had returned home between her shifts because she really, really doesn’t want him to go back to school just yet, and until the haircut had happened, she’d still been hoping he wasn’t. It wasn’t a bad argument in terms of arguments, but they’d both ended up snappily disagreeing across the faded rainbow rug in their living room because she doesn’t think he’s ready, neither physically nor mentally, for the stresses of school just yet.

Evan does know she has a point, he understands he’s not entirely better yet, but he’s remarkably stubborn when he wants to be, and in the end, she’d surrendered, upset and concerned but finally accepting he’d made up his mind. He’d hid in his room afterwards, shaken by their battle, and when he’d finally ventured back downstairs, an apology already scripted in his head, he’d found a note in the kitchen rather than his mother, the paper telling him she’d gone to work and reminding him to eat.

He hadn’t, he’d gone to bed instead, feeling tired and anxious and beaten by their argument and lay under the covers and counted the fluorescent starts tacked to his bedroom ceiling until they’d ran out of charge and faded into the blackness. He’d resorted to fetching his well-worn bear from where he’d hidden it years back in response to Jared’s teasing eventually in the hope its comfort and familiarity would help his too busy brain find the peacefulness of sleep, but in the end, it hadn’t, and he’d lay there annoyingly awake until some ungodly time in the morning when exhaustion had won the battle with his restless brain. He’d woken again in the middle of the night too, lying awake between 4:21 and 5:03 just because his restless mind was too busy fretting to sleep, and so by the time morning had arrived, he had woken exhausted both physically and emotionally and feeling kind of ill for it.

He still doesn’t really feel well enough for a day at school at, his head is aching and his hands are shaking and his heart is relentlessly thrumming in his too tight chest and so despite his stubbornness on the subject ,f , Evan does understand why him mom would rather him not go back to school just yet.

He kind of understands why she’s frowning currently too.

“You need to eat, Evan,” she sighs, “You’re still recovering, it’s important.” There’s a pause, and then her voice softens a little. “You can order food online now, you know? You don’t even have to talk to anyone on the phone. I know you don’t like the phone.”

“No, I know, but ….” He trails off, thinking better of his protest before it can leave his lips. It is true that he can order food without speaking on the phone, but that doesn’t help that he still has to go to the door to collect it, and pay, and then stand there in awkward silence whilst the delivery person counts out his change, and that isn’t something he’s currently capable of doing. His mom doesn’t need to know about that though. She has enough on her plate to worry about.

“But what?”

Evan glances up from his shoe, fingers still anxiously entwined in the lace, to find her staring at him. Their eyes catch for a moment before he breaks away. “No, it’s- it’s nothing.”

Heidi runs a hand through her hair, a frown on her lips before she schools it away. 

“You’re 17, Evan, you need to be able to order dinner for yourself if I’m it work,” she says with a sigh. It sounds a little frustrated, and Evan understand why. He’s failed her again. Useless and broken and- “It’s what you’re meant to be working on with Dr Sherman, isn’t it? Engaging with the world, not running away from it.”

Evan’s heart falls a little more because that is what he’s meant to be working on, it’s true, but just because he knows he has nothing to worry about when answering the door to the pizza delivery, they’re not there to judge him, just swap their pizza for his cash, doesn’t mean he doesn’t worry. Anxiety is like that. It’s irrational. It can’t be solved with logic any more than depression can be solved by telling someone to cheer up. He wouldn’t be such a mess if it could.

He can’t exactly argue that point to his mom though. She won’t understand.

“You’re right. I’m going to be a lot better,” he says instead of explaining, the words a rush.

“No, I know. I know you are.” Heidi agrees, a forced smile and faux encouragement on her lips. “Which is why I’ve booked you an appointment with Dr Sh erman for this afternoon. I’ll pick you up after school.”

Evan looks up again at that, fingers still twitching over his shoelace, but eyes suddenly fixed on his mom in confusion. 

“But I had one last week?”

“And both Dr Sherman and I thought you could maybe do with one this week too. Have you been writing those letters? The pep talks to yourself?”

Evan kind of wants to tell her that she’d know if she’d been around, he’s been writing them for her benefit after all, but he doesn’t.

“Yeah, I’ve started one. I’ll finish it at school,” he says instead, flicking a hand towards his closed laptop.

Heidi’s smile is genuine this time, a little relived too.

“Good. That’s good. Those letters are gonna help you, you know, build your confidence. Help you seize the day!”

Evan supresses an eye-roll. “I guess,” he agrees, not nearly as convinced the letters will do anything to help as his mother is. At least she’s happy he’s trying though. Not as happy as she would be if he’d actually solved the mess he’d become, but that’s never going to happen.

His anxiety is unsolvable, they’ve been trying and failing for years, and now there those thoughts, the ones that take him to dark places he knows he shouldn’t go, places that tell him he’s not worth the air he breathes let alone his mom’s worry and hard earned wages, places that make him consider the collection of medication in his bedside cabinet, places that result in him climbing 40 foot tall oaks and out on to branches he knows won’t support his weight, and he knows those thoughts aren’t due to anxiety alone. They’re just a sign his already broken brain is possible somehow now more fucked up than ever.

“Look, are you sure you’re ready to go back to school?” Heidi asks for possibly the hundredth time in the past five days, her tone suddenly concerned again, almost a little desperate. “It wouldn’t hurt to have one more week off. Build your strength a little more before you start again. You still look awfully pale.”

Evan does roll his eyes this time. “_Mom,_” he protests, fixing her with an exasperated glare. He’s aware she does have a point, though; his reflection still does look just a little corpse-like in the mirror save for the tired bruising beneath his eyes and the new pink scar just below his hairline and the still yellow skin that surrounds it. It’s a little ironic, he realises, comparing his reflection to a corpse.

“Okay, okay!” Heidi holds her hands up in mock surrender, but the worry doesn’t fade from her eyes. “Just … be careful, alright?”

Evan tries for a comforting smile. “Mom, really, I’m okay,”

She looks at him then nods. There’s a pause, and then, “I’m fixing sandwiches for lunch. We’re out of ham, so is just cheese okay?”

“Oh, yeah, sure.”

“Great.” She forces a smile that doesn’t reach her tired, blue eyes, and then leaves.

Evan sighs and falls back against his headboard with a quiet clonk. He’s ready for the day to be over and it hasn’t even started yet.

He makes it downstairs a few minutes before they need to leave to find his lunch box, as promised, sat on the table beside his mother’s and a plate of already toasted Smores flavoured pop-tarts and a glass of orange juice sat before his chair. His mom is in her seat, her eyes distantly gazing out of the window and a mug of what he assumes to be coffee in her hands. She smiles warmly over the rim of it when she notices he’s there.

“I made you breakfast,” she tells him unnecessarily, and Evan mutters his thanks despite the wave of irritation that surges. He doesn’t want breakfast, and he certainly doesn’t want pop tarts. It isn’t that he doesn’t like them, he does, the Smores ones especially, they’re in the cupboard for that very reason, but he finds they’re much too sweet so early in the day and he’s already feeling a little sick, his stomach fluttering in anticipation. He sits down, though, more because he has to than he wants to, and picks one up, nibbling at the too sweet corner in spite of his appetite having already been ruined by the butterflies that had taken up residency inside him.

She drinks whilst he picks at the pop tart, and then, when her mug is empty and he’s drank his juice and eaten enough that he only receives a look and a sigh rather than a lecture, he heads back upstairs to clean his teeth whilst she fusses with the plates.

She’s waiting for him by the door, her shoes on and her bag in her hand when he returns downstairs, his own backpack slung over one shoulder. There’s a pen in her other hand, he realises as he approaches, and when he’s down the stairs, she holds it out for him to take. There’s a confused frown on his brow as he cautiously accepts the Sharpie.

“So you can ask the other kids at school to sign your cast,” she explains a little over enthusiastically, an encouraging smile on her lips. “It’d be the perfect icebreaker, wouldn’t it?”

“Oh. Perfect,” he says as he pockets the pen despite having not heard anything less perfect all day.

Heidi, as promised, drives him to school rather than dropping him off a few roads away and leaving him to walk from closer than home but without adding much of a detour to her journey like she usually does when he needs a lift. They could leave earlier on those days and then she’d be able to drop him off without making herself late but then he’d be at school early and he doesn’t really want more free time at school. Besides, it isn’t a problem all that often, he usually takes the bus.

The journey is quiet save for the chattering on the radio because, despite Heidi’s attempts to engage him in conversation, Evan is much too anxious about the day ahead to even try to consider attempting to work out what to say. There’s a slight tension in the car too, Heidi still not overly happy that he’s returning to school so soon despite knowing it really is his decision to make. She asks him again if he’s sure he’s ready when they pull up in the parking lot and then, when he’s said he is for what feels like the hundredth time, she explains that the school knows what has happened, she’s already told them, and that they’ve agreed he can go home if he’s hurting or tired or feeling ill as long as he signs out at reception. She wants him to call her if he is though, let her pick him up, and he sighs and says _okay_ and picks his bag from the footwell in hope his mother takes the hint.

“Remember to eat your lunch,” she says instead.

“Mom!”

Heidi laughs at his frustrated expression, her insincere apology lost in slightly forced chuckles, and he rolls his eyes and unclips his seatbelt. She takes the hint and pauses her laughter.

“Evan,” she calls as he unlatches the door with a soft clunk, “I’m so proud of you, you know.” Her tone is fond behind her worry, a little more genuine than usual too, but Evan can think of little else to say than “Oh, good,” before creaks open the door and hurries from the car. She shouldn’t be proud of him. She wouldn’t be if she knew what he had done.

School is almost immediately overwhelming.

There are people everywhere and they’re shouting and laughing and yelling and chatting and Evan doesn’t think he has heard quite so many voices since the end of the last school year. The corridor is crowded too, and although most kids are standing by lockers or walking in huddles, others are hurrying to homeroom or to friends and a few are running about boisterously, excited by seeing other can’t have last seen all that long ago. A couple of kids are throwing a book around. It somersaults over the upstretched arm of a third as he tries to reclaim it.

Evan ends up skirting along the wall of lockers as he heads deeper into the building towards his own, his heart already pounding in his chest and his breathing a mess and his casted arm held protectively to his stomach. He gets knocked into twice by accident, and then almost collides with Alana Beck as he rounds a corner. He startles to a stop and so does she, but instead of walking round him like he expects, she stops and smiles, her expression alight with enthusiasm.

“Evan, hi! How was your summer?”

Evan blinks before his startled brain catches up with the sudden conversation and the fact that the sudden conversation is with him.

“Oh, um, hi. My-”

“Mine was productive. I did three internships and ninety hours of community service. I know: wow!”

She looks at him as though expecting him to agree and he tries but he only manages “Yeah, wow, that’s-” before she’s talking again. He doesn’t try to fight the interruption.

“And even though I was so busy, I still made some great friends. Or, well, acquaintances, more like.”

He nods as though he really comprehends what she’s saying, as though he understands how one can make a great acquaintance, and then, in the pause she’s left for him to reply, he summons his courage and reaches into his pocket for the sharpie. His sweaty fingers fumble the smooth plastic.

“Do you- um, I don’t know if you’re busy but- um, do you maybe want to sign my cast?”

“Oh my God, what happened to your arm?” Alana’s eyes widen as though she’s only just noticed the casted arm held to his stomach and maybe she has. Maybe she’s too busy excitedly reciting the pre-planned speech about her summer to notice anything about who she’s talking to. That’s almost certainly what’s happened; Evan sort of doubts she’d notice if he’d grown a second head or a third arm or a horn like a narwhal over the summer. He hasn’t grown a second head though, or a narwhal’s horn, he’s bruised his head and broken his arm, and how that’s happened is what she wants to know. 

“Oh. Well. I broke it. I was climbing a tree and-” he starts, the explanation as prepared as Alana’s, but she’s talking again before he can finish, his lie interrupted.

“Oh really?” she asks with faux interest but without stopping to let him answer. “My grandma broke her hip getting into the bathtub in July. That was the beginning of the end, the doctors said, because then she died.”

Evan blinks at the sudden change in conversation, the bluntness of her words, the detachment with which she’d said them, before his brain finally clicks back into gear.

“Oh! I’m so-” he starts to say, because isn’t ‘sorry’ what you say when someone tells you a relative has died, but before he has time for the sympathy to really leave his lips Alana is speaking again.

“Anyway, have a nice day!” she commands, her tone already once again sky high with excitement and then, before Evan can even start to summon a reply from his stuttering mind, she’s vanished into the crowd in search of her next acquaintance.

Evan stands frozen by the lockers, feeling shaky and a little startled like the shocked victim of a vocal and particularly unstoppable tornado.

He manages to make it to his locker without anyone else speaking to him, which isn’t exactly hard, people don’t speak to him as a rule. He isn’t all that sure that they even notice him at all, if he’s being honest.

It’s only when he’s standing before his open locker, staring at the impersonal grey steel back unhidden by a lack of possession, that he realises he’s only there out of habit, that he has no books yet to take from there to class and nothing to leave behind from his mostly empty backpack, and he’s left debating if people will notice if he opens his locker and then stares into it and then leaves, neither taking nor leaving anything, and if they’ll think that weird, and think him weird, and he doesn’t want people to think he’s weird. There isn’t anything from his locker to take, it isn’t as though he usually stores anything in it other than textbooks and a couple of Xanax just in case he loses his backpack, and his gym bag on a Wednesday, or a Friday this year, actually, he’s a senior now, but it isn’t as though he has anything in his backpack to leave either, except maybe his lunch, maybe, he can always come back and fetch it later if he wants it.

He ends up doing neither, instead dithering before the open locker door, his anxiety reaching breaking point as he frets that the people he’s convinced don’t know he exists are staring, judging, laughing. It makes no sense, he realises, but he’s somehow caught between those two mindsets, one telling him nobody cares, nobody even notices him, and the other insisting everyone is staring and judging and thinking him weird, thinking he’s a freak. It makes no sense at all, but then, minds don’t. Dr Sherman has told him that again and again and again and-

“Is it weird to be the first person in history to break their arm jerking off too much, or do you consider than an honour?”

Evan whips round at the voice to find Jared there, a smug grin plastered on his lips and his hands in his pockets with a kind of forced causality. He laughs at Evan’s jumpiness just as he so often does; he treat’s it almost like a game to see how high he can get Evan to start, how loud he will yelp. Evan doesn’t find it funny, it just leaves him on edge, his heart fluttering in anticipation of another jump scare like he’s a character in a particularly shitty scary movie.

“Wait, what? I didn’t, I wasn’t doing … that.”

Jared’s smirk grows at his discomfort. “Paint me the picture: You’re in your bedroom, you’ve got Zoe Murphy’s Instagram up on your weird off-brand cell phone-”

“That wasn’t what happened! Obviously. I was- um, well I was climbing a tree and I fell.”

“You fell out of a tree? What are you, like, an acorn?” Jared’s expression is a pool of amusement but whether at his own joke or at the idea of Evan falling from a tree because what a fucking sad way to break your arm, Evan doesn’t know. He tries not to let it bother him, focuses on his explanation instead. His lie. Or not a lie, really, maybe. He did fall, the branch broke and he fell.

“Well, I was- I don’t know if you know this, but I worked this summer as an apprentice park ranger at Ellison State Park. I’m sort of a tree expert now. Not to brag, but …”

Jared raises an eyebrow, as though maybe being a tree expert isn’t something he should be bragging about even if he is one.

Evan coughs. “Anyway, I climbed this forty-foot-tall oak tree-”

“And then you fell?”

“Well, yeah, I- the branch broke and I- well, I fell.” And it’s true, it isn’t a lie, except Jared is still looking at him and Evan can’t work out if that’s scepticism in his expression or not, and logic is saying it isn’t, why would Jared doubt him, Jared doesn’t care enough to really think about what he’s saying, but the anxiety thinks he knows, has unriddled what he tried to do and he really, really doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want him to know, he might tell his mom and she’ll tell Evan’s because they’re good friends, Heidi and Janice.

Evan reminds himself to breathe, removes his fingers from the loose thread of fiberglass, forces his eyes back up to Jared who’s looking at him with his brows still raised. Evan wonders if any time has passed at all. “So, how was- erm, what did you do at- you had a good summer?”

Jared looks almost relieved at the change in topic, the perhaps-scepticism morphing to a cocky grin. “Well, my bunk dominated in capture the flag and I got second-base-below-the-bra with this girl from Israel who’s going to like be in the army … so, yeah …” He waves a hand, expression smug as he brags. “Hopefully that answers your question.”

He turns to go as though suddenly bored of the conversation now he’s had his chance to give his own little speech about his summer and Evan realises with a sting he very likely only bothered to approach to startle him, tease him about his aching broken wrist, and brag.

“Do you want to sign my cast?” he asks suddenly, almost startling himself, and plucks the Sharpie from his pocket.

Jared stops, turns back, eyebrows raised in question. “Why are you asking me?”

“Well, just, I thought, because we’re friends.”

“We’re family friends,” he corrects, tone slow as though Evan needs the help in understanding that as he swaggers back over. “That’s like a whole different thing and you know it.”

Evan nods despite the hurt, tries not to flinch as Jared claps him on the shoulder of his bad arm.

“Hey, tell your mom to tell my mom I was nice to you or else my parents won’t pay for my car insurance.”

“I will,” Evan agrees despite knowing he won’t, and Jared smirks and gives him another pat and then- 

“Hey, Connor!”

Evan startles round to follow Jared’s gaze to find Connor Murphy standing beside the lockers a little way down the corridor. He’s fiddling roughly with something in his tatty satchel. Or he was anyway, his hands are now paused inside, his eyes up and focused on Jared at the call of his name.

“I’m loving the new hair length. Very school shooter chic.”

Evan freezes at the crude joke.

Connor straightens his back, takes his hands from his bag. He casts Jared a withering look.

Jared falls quiet, still, he bravado fading. “I was kidding. It was a joke.”

“Yeah, no, it was funny. I’m laughing. Can’t you tell?” Connor steps forwards, his expression twisted and his posture almost threatening. He looks so unlike the boy who Evan had sat with in a field three days before that he almost has trouble believing it is. “Am I not laughing hard enough for you?”

Jared laughs, a nervous laugh, but still, he’s laughing, and that isn’t helping at all. “You’re such a freak.” He’s still chuckling as he flees in the direction of their homeroom, vanishing into the thinning crowd before Evan can even consider fleeing with him too.

He stares instead, left alone in the crowd with a Connor he thought he knew and unable to decide whether to speak or not. He doesn’t know what to say even if he could decide. In the end, it doesn’t matter because a nervous chuckle bubbles from his lips instead.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?”

“What?”

Connor steps towards forwards, expression intense, posture defensive. “Stop fucking laughing.”

“I’m, I’m not-”

“You think I’m a freak?” He takes another step.

Evan’s hands raise, half in defence, half in surrender. “No. No, I don’t-”

“I’m not the freak.”

“But I wasn’t-”

“You’re the fucking freak!”

And Evan isn’t really sure if Connor means to barge into him as he bolts or not, but a pointy shoulder collides solidly with his own and a spidery hand pushes him away. It throws his balance and he ends up on the floor, his head spinning, heart aching, and a hot agony shooting through the arm inside his cast. It had clattered loudly against the tiles as he’d landed, cracking like a pencil or a branch or an arm after a fall.

Time pauses and races simultaneously, his thoughts slow compared the hurried feet traveling the corridor around him but at the same time rapid and reeling and out of control as he tries to understand what happened, what went wrong, why Connor Murphy, the boy who had sat beside him when they both thought he was dying, the boy who had saved his life, the boy who he’d chatted to, connected with, thought he’d understood, had shouted and sworn and called him a freak and shoved him to the ground.

It hurt, it really hurt.

He’d been hopeful.

He now knows he shouldn’t have been.

Dazedly, he climbs back to his feet, and he’s halfway there when someone reaches down, extends a hand to help him up, and he follows it to find himself staring at the concerned expression of Zoe Evangeline Murphy.

“Hey, I’m sorry about my brother. I saw him push you. He’s a psychopath.”

Evan blinks, forces his brain into focusing. It kind of works, half of him returns to the corridor. The other half is still reeling, partially because Connor, and partially because Zoe Murphy is talking to him. He’s aware it’s likely out of guilt, just her correcting her brother’s wrongs, fixing the messes he makes, but his crushing teenage heart is still mesmerised she’s there, talking to him, her hand still extended expectantly.

Despite her offered help, he stands unaided; as much as he would love to take her hand, to hold those perfectly calloused fingers in his own, he’s very aware of how clammy, how disgusting, his shaking right hand is.

Zoe seems unphased by his decline.

“Evan, right?”

“Evan?” he parrots stupidly, mind busy wondering why Zoe Murphy know his name.

“That’s your name?” Her expression folds in confusion and Evan’s reddens in embarrassment. His hands are sweaty, the palm of the right wet against his fingers as he clutches as he polo and the left dampening the soft cotton padding inside his cast. He isn’t sure which is more disgusting.

“Oh. Yes. Evan. It’s Evan. Sorry”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Well, it’s just because you said Evan and then I said- I repeated it, which is- that’s so annoying when people do that.” The words stumble from his mouth much too quickly, much too stuttered, his tone much more animated than it should be.

“I’m Zoe,” she persists after a second, and holds out her hand for him to shake as though he isn’t a stuttering, stumbling mess. He goes to shake it, and then wipes his clammy palm on his shirt instead.

“No, I know.”

“You know?”

“No, just, I’ve seen you play guitar in jazz band. I Love jazz band. I love jazz. Not all jazz, but definitely like jazz band jazz.” He’s floundering, and he knows it. He think’s Zoe knows it too, judging by her expression. “That’s so weird, I’m sorry.”

“You apologize a lot.”

“I’m sorry.” His eyes find his cast, so do his fingers. He picks restlessly at the fiberglass around his thumb. It’s a futile outlet for his anxiety. “Oh, I mean- you know what I mean.”

Zoe nods as though she doesn’t and smiles and says, “Well, I’ll talk to you later,” and then turns to go with a light, almost bemused laugh. Evan, despite his fluttering heart and stumbling words and the sweat on his shaking hands, doesn’t want this conversation to be over.

“Do you want to sign my ...” he starts to say, and then stops, chickens out, bails on social interaction. His anxiety wins yet again. It always does. 

She turns back anyway. “What?”

“What did you say?”

A frown puckers her perfect brow. “I didn’t say anything. You said something.”

“No. Me?” He glances behind him at the thinning crowd despite being pretty sure she knows it was him that spoke. Her expression confirms it, but he can’t stop mid-lie, so he persists, tries to smile, tries to not look like he’s seconds, milometers, any other tiny measurement away from a breakdown. “No way, Jose,” he says, regretting the stupid phrase the second it left his lips.

Zoe smiles, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, amusement, somewhere between the two. “Um. Okay … Jose,” she says, and then with a wave, she’s off, leaving him alone once again.

He leans back against his locker, trying and failing to calm his fluttering heart and racing pulse, quell his crushing anxiety, quieten the thoughts in his humiliated, reeling brain. He’s a wreck, he knows, and he wishes he wasn’t more than anything else in the world.

The bell rings, and he swallows purposefully, opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing, ignores the people his anxiety says are staring but probably aren’t. He pushes himself off the locker and starts skirting the corridor once again. 

His breathing is just about back in a normal rhythm by the time he makes it to homeroom. 

Homeroom isn’t awful, surprisingly, because this year he’s in Mrs Fenton’s class, and as she taught him biology in junior year, they’ve already been through the ‘yes, I know the register says my name is Mark but please call me Evan’ malarkey. He’s never before been so relieved to have to stutter ‘here’ in front of his class as his name in called.

Jared comes over to talk to him afterwards and gives him another run down on his time at camp. He grins cockily as tells him about the computer nerds he’d befriended and the games they’d won and again the girl he’d met there with one eyebrow raised and his hands in his pockets as he leans against his desk. Evan says little in reply, but then it isn’t as if he really needs to with Jared because he does more than enough talking for the both of them and Evan finds he doesn’t mind at all. It takes much less effort to sit and listen than it does to try to think of replies, and he can’t regret what he has said if he hasn’t said anything at all.

Despite homeroom being surprisingly okay, the rest of the day that follows is not. They all have to stand up and introduce themselves in English, name and year and that’s not too bad, but then they have to say an interesting fact too, and that’s … Evan ends up stuttering that he knows a lot about trees like some sort of plant freak, and then has to excuse himself to the bathroom to have a mini-panic attack in peace.

Math comes next, and math is usually okay, he can do math, not as well as Jared and Alana but he’s pretty good, except today it isn’t because he’s spent so much of the lesson lost in his head, fretting about his conversations with Alana and Jared and Connor and Zoe and the still unsigned fiberglass of his cast that he ends the lesson with homework due for Thursday and little idea on what it even is let alone how to solve it.

Spanish is afterwards, and they spend the first half of the lesson telling each other about how they had spent their summer and Evan can barely speak English at the best of times so a second language is about seven steps too far and it isn’t like he can really say what he did with most of his summer even if he could form words instead of stutters, and so by the time lunch has arrived, he’s peopled out and exhausted, his anxiety hitting critical levels.

The fractured arm inside his unsigned cast is throbbing too, and that isn’t really helping either.

After a few minutes of dithering in an empty toilet stall, Evan heads to the IT suit for lunch, stomach too unsettled to even consider going somewhere sandwiches could be consumed, and once there, in the blissfully abandoned room, he gets out his laptop. He settles before it, knee juddering restlessly as he waits for it to turn on, and then log in, and then for the word document containing his half-written letter to open.

His phone rings just as his laptop screen turns white, streaked black by text.

It’s Heidi ringing, and his heart hardens habitually as it prepares for the disappointment it is bound to receive. She’ll be working late, he knows, to tell him so is pretty much the only reason she ever calls.

He taps the little green phone on his touchscreen, and before he can even say hello, his mom has already started apologising because she’s working late, surprise surprise, and he promises that’s fine even though it isn’t, and then tells her he’ll take the bus to therapy.

“Perfect,” she says, and it sounds a little forced, like maybe she doesn’t think that’s perfect at all, like maybe she’s remembered that she doesn’t even think him recovered enough to be at school, let alone making his own way from there to therapy and then home again afterwards. He’s sorting dinner for himself too, it turns out, Trader Joe dumplings, she suggests.

“Maybe,” he replies, and she sighs through the phone.

“Please, Evan. Eat dinner, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Did you finish your letter yet?” she asks, changing the topic at his tone. “Dr Sherman is expecting you to bring one.”

“Yeah, no, I already finished it. I’m in the computer lab right now, printing it out.” It’s only half a lie, he reasons, like he is in the computer lab, and there is a letter open on his laptop screen.

“That’s good. I hope it was a good day, sweetheart.”

“It was … yeah, it was really great.”

“Great. That’s great,” she says, and Evan believes her words are true possibly as much as she’d believed his. “I hope it’s the beginning of a great year. I think we could both use one of those, huh? Shit. I have to run. Bye. I love yo-.”

She’s gone before she can even really finish her sentence, leaving Evan’s own goodbye whispered to no one.

His heart aches.

He stares at the letter on the screen through suddenly damp eyes, and then in one distressed flinch, he’s hit ctrl and A and delete.

_Dear Evan Hansen, _

He types roughly enough that his broken arm protests at the force and the keys clatter angrily in a room empty save for computers and silent except for the quiet humming of their fans.

_It turns out this wasn’t an amazing day after all. This isn’t going to be an amazing week or an amazing year because why would it be? _

_Oh, I know, because there’s Connor and all my hope was pinned on Connor who I thought I understood and who understood me. I thought maybe something would be different, that maybe I wouldn’t be quite so alone because he seemed to understand. Because he knows what it’s like to feel that way. I thought … but turns out that isn’t how it works. Turns out nothing will be different at all. _

_I wish it was. I wish everything was different. I wish I was part of something. Anything. I wish that anything I said mattered, to anyone. I wish that I mattered. I mean, lets face it, would anybody even notice if I disappeared tomorrow? _

_Sincerely, your best and most dearest friend, _

_Me. _

Evan swallows unshed, hopeless tears and presses print with much more force than is strictly necessary. He saves the letter, for what reason he doesn’t really understand, and mechanically closes down his ancient laptop. His thoughts circle, spiralling endlessly like the little loading symbol on the glowing screen as Windows logs him off. They end up back at that day in the forest, and he wonders not for the first time what would had happened if he’d fallen from a little higher, landed a little harder, if his injured kidney had bled a little quicker and he’d ended up passing out and dying on the parched grass below the trees, fading from the world alone and unmissed and unnoticed and without so much as a-

“So, how’s your arm?”

Evan startles violently at the voice. It’s familiar, achingly so, and yet entirely unexpected. He turns to find Connor staring at him, a frown in his furrowed brow as though he’s trying to work something out. Work Evan out, maybe. Evan doesn’t like it. He looks away, breaks eye contact, his gaze falling to the white fiberglass of the cast rested on his thighs. He picks at it even though he knows he shouldn’t.

“Oh, it’s um … it’s okay, I guess,” he says, and it’s a lie; the arm is itchy beneath the cast, it almost always is, and awfully sore from both the earlier fall, or push, really, and his unnecessarily forceful typing but Connor doesn’t need to know that. Connor likely doesn’t care anyway. Why would he? Connor hates him. Connor thinks he’s a freak.

The frown deepens, and Connor nods slowly as though he doesn’t believe a word that’s been said. “No one’s signed your cast.”

Evan swallows the wave of upset at the words. “No, I know.”

“I’ll sign it,” he announces, and he sounds surer about that than Evan has ever been about anything.

“Oh. Um … you don’t have to.”

“Do you have a sharpie?”

Evan pauses, and then reluctantly stands and pulls the pen from his pocket. He holds it out for Connor to take. The pen shakes, his fingers trembling.

Connor takes it from him, and then takes hold of the cast too and pulls it a little roughly towards him. His roughness doesn’t cause him any harm, and although the additional bolt of pain that flickers through the already throbbing bones is little more than the hurt caused by his typing, Evan can’t help the winced yelp that escapes his lips. Connor’s mismatched eyes flicker up to meet his, his frown suddenly apologetic, before he turns his attention back to the fiberglass and starts on his name.

The letters turn out to be bigger than Evan had expected, bolder, taking up the whole front of the cast with the C on the back of his hand and the R up by his elbow. It’s awfully noticeable, and in Sharpie, and never coming off, and Evan’s stomach squirms a little at the thought of the onslaught of stares and questions his anxiety informs him will be coming his way. Maybe he’ll just have to wear a hoodie. Pretend he isn’t overheating for the next month. 

“Oh. Great. Thanks,” he finds himself saying anyway, eyes still on the lettering. Connor shrugs and hands back the pen.

“Now we can both pretend that we have friends,” he says, and Evan doesn’t understand the meaning of his tone. It’s soft but sad and a little apologetic.

“Good- good point.” He fumbles the sharpie back into his pocket and turns to flee. There’s a rustle of paper behind him.

“Is this yours?” Connor asks. “I found it on the printer. ‘Dear Evan Hansen’.”

Evan’s heart plummets like he’s in freefall. His breathing catches and his eyes widen, and he turns abruptly back, his sweaty hands extended in a silent plea for the paper in Connor’s own. “Oh, that’s just a stupid- it’s a paper I was forced to write for a- um, for an assignment-”

“‘Because there’s Connor,’?”

Another plummet. “No, no, please don’t read-”

“‘He knows what it’s like to feel that way.’?” Connor reads, eyes fixed on the letter, expression crumpled like the paper clenched in his too-tight grip. His confusion morphs to fury.

“-please-”

“To feel like what, Hansen?” he demands, voice hard and quiet. Dangerous, almost.

“I didn’t-”

“You don’t fucking know how I feel?”

“I don’t-”

“You just wanted me to agree, didn’t you? You wanted me to admit it? So then you could tell everyone that I’m crazy, right?” His tone raises with every question. It’s bordering on irate by the last.

Evan steps back, heartrate soaring, pulse thrumming in his throat in panic. “No. Wait, I don’t even- What?”

“Fuck you, Hansen!” Connor hisses. The words burn with anger and his posture is curled, defensive despite his fury. He turns on his heel, storms for the exit.

“What? Connor, please, it wasn’t- I really need that back-” Evan calls after him, almost following, dithering and spiralling and-

The door swings shut behind him with a bang leaving Evan stunned and letterless and utterly alone.

The afternoon crawls by, time cruel and slow, hours passing like minutes and minutes like seconds, and by the time Evan is sat on the bus, his headphones in and silent and his bag still void of a letter, he’s more than ready to climb into bed and lay there until morning. He’s more than ready to climb a tree and wait for a branch to break if he thought that’d help, if he thought that it’d work.

He doesn’t do either of those options though, he instead stays on the bus as it passes his house, as it travels towards the posh side of town where his therapist’s clinic is, and keeps his head down, his eyes averted from his fellow travelers as he pretends to not exist. It isn’t hard, most people don’t notice he exists when they’re not staring and judging.

His phone is in his sweaty, shaking hands as he sits, the screen flicking on and off and on and off as he repeatedly unlocks it and opens ‘messages’, his guilty conscience begging him to text Connor, to make sure he’s okay, before his anxiety takes over and he deletes what little he has managed to type and closed the app and clicks the screen off once again.

He manages a text a few minutes before his stop, the words a mess due to the incessant shaking and the ruined cast on his ruined arm but the intent clear, and he sends it before he can chicken out again because once it’s sent, it’s sent, and although he can stress and fret and worry, at least Connor will know he doesn’t think he’s a freak.

**-**Monday 2 Sept. 15:51-

**I’m sorry avour the letter. I dhouldnt have writreb about **

**you. Also I don’t thinm you’re crazy. I rally don’t. Sorry **

**again. Ps thank you fir signing mt cast. **

He frets over the text once it’s sent, just as he knew he would, and it joins the worry swirling in his gut about the shitty, shitty first day back and Connor and the letter that he’s now missing and therapy in general and the fact he has to turn up with no letter and Dr Sherman is going to ask why and how can he even begin to explain why? Dr Sherman will call his mom, he thinks, because they’ll want to talk about him, say stuff he simultaneously wants to know and dreads to hear, discuss what a failure he is, how broken, a burden, a waste of life.

By the time they reach his stop, there’s no text on his phone, and between that and everything else Evan’s much, much too worked up to even consider ringing the bell to halt the bus and draw everyone’s attention to him as walks down the aisle, their narrowed eyes on him as he passes because he’s slowed them down, disrupted their journey. No one else seems to want to get off there either, so the bus keeps going, driving on past therapy and into the posh neighbourhood on the other side of town.

Evan gets off at the next stop along with a girl from his school who he thinks might be in the year below him and a smaller boy with a similar shaped nose and eyes so alike that he’s almost certainly her brother. He walks in the opposite direction to them despite both therapy and his house being in the direction they are heading because he’s sure they’ll be able to hear his rapid, useless, wheezy breathing if he follows them. Hell, they’d probably be able to hear the racing drum of his panicked heartbeat too if how loud it is in his own ears is anything to go by.

By blessed coincidence, he stumbles upon a park a few minutes into his walk, and it’s small, little more than a swing set in a small patch of grass surrounded by a nearly trimmed hedge, but at least it provides him with a bench on which he can sit, his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair as he tries to calm his breathing, counting the seconds between breaths with little effect, and waits for the shaking of his hands and the trembling of his limbs to pass.

Eventually, his heartrate returns to something that might be considered normal and his breathing slows enough that his head no longer spins when he stands, and after a second of deliberation, he decides that maybe he should head home rather than to the clinic since he’s already 20 minutes late for his slot with Dr Sherman and he isn’t good with turning up late on the best of days.

Heidi is going to get a call, he realises, as he crosses the small field towards the gate, and the thought very nearly sends him back to the bench for another session of trying to convince his brain to calm down enough to remember how to breath.

He walks home rather than getting the bus, and by the time he gets there, the sun is just starting to dip below the rooftops. It’s late, much later than he would normally get home, but is isn’t as though there’s anyone there to notice, let alone care. There isn’t anyone to care he’s spent the past two hours walking home when he’s meant to be taking it easy either.

His hands shake as he unlocks the front door, the key scratching at the metal surround as he struggles to fit it in the hole, and his legs shake as he tries to kick off his shoes and he ends up sitting on the stairs to get them off rather than risk falling.

He drops his bag on the floor beside the table as he passes and then scours the fridge for something sugary in hope that that’ll solve the tremors plaguing his limbs and the lightness of his head. The orange juice helps a little, and the pop tart he has for dinner a little more, and after he’s eaten and put his plate in the sink, he takes himself upstairs.

He cleans his teeth and pees, checks his phone for texts, and upon finding none, plugs it in to charge. Afterwards, he all but collapses onto his bed fully clothed, and once he’s there, he finds himself reluctant to move. He’s exhausted, both emotionally and physically, and despite fact it’s barely 8 pm and he’s still dressed and on top of his quilt and his mind is still reeling from the day, he falls very quickly into a restless, dream filled sleep.


	6. Metaphorical Cereal

Evan wakes rather abruptly to a too loud, too fast beeping and a blinding brightness behind his eyelids.

Disorientated and alarmed and with his heart suddenly racing in his chest, he startles upright, sitting propped on his elbows as he squints through the brightness in panic. His hazel eyes burn, demanding closure against the light, but he forces them to stay open as he tries to comprehend where he is and what has happened and why he’s there. His first thought is of the hospital, of the too bright lights and whitewashed walls and the beep beep beep of the machines and terror swirls painfully in his gut because he can’t deal with that again, he can’t, but then, as his wild eyes finally adjust and the room comes into as much focus as it is going to, he realises he knows exactly where he is.

A shaky humourless laugh of relief bubbles from his chapped lips and he slumps back against his pillows feeling almost weak with relief because it isn’t a hospital room he’s in at all. It’s his own. His blue walled bedroom with its messy, overcrowded shelves and well-worn desk and the large, pin-pricked map tacked opposite where he sits. It’s his own bed he’s on too, on not in, and his own polo and khakis rather than a gown like it had been at the hospital because he isn’t in the hospital, and that’s…

Evan’s chest heaves as he lays there, his breathing still shuddering and useless with residual panic and his body shaking with dissipating adrenaline and his mind keeps reeling, trying to simultaneously dispel the irrational terror it had woken up in and remember what had happened the night before. He’s still trying to work out why he’s on his bed rather than in it and why he’s dressed in clothes rather than the ratty, too short pyjamas he usually sleeps in when his mom starts to yell, starts calling his name through the thin wood of his door, and he finally comes back to himself a little and realises that the too loud, incessant beep is that of his alarm. It’s an unfamiliar awakening after the past few weeks, and it’s still ringing, loud and abrupt and so with a shaking hand, he reaches over to his bedside table for his phone.

And stops, and stares, because there on the cast bracing his sore left wrist, is a name. Six letters scrawled in bold, black sharpie.

_Connor_, it says, and Evan’s heart sinks at the sight of it, at the memories that all come crashing back down around him.

Despair follows and he almost wants to cry, to curl up in bed and never leave, to climb a tree and wait for the branch to break, because despite his hope that maybe the first day back at school would be a good day after all, wouldn’t be bad, at least, he had been wrong, and it had. Alana had spoken at him rather than to him and Jared had laughed and boasted and reminded him they were only family friends and only that because he needed his car insurance paying and Connor had pushed him and Zoe had been kind but he’d fucked that up too and his mom had cancelled on him, surprise surprise. And so, he’d written a letter he shouldn’t have written, and it had been taken by the one person who he’d give anything for it to not have. And that…

Fuck, that hadn’t helped at all. 

The alarm beside his bed is still blaring, though, and his mom is shouting at him, to turn it off, he thinks, so he reaches across and takes the phone in his shaking hand and slides his thumb across the screen. The room is very suddenly awfully quiet.

The screen of the phone is awfully empty too, no replying texts from Connor, no call from his mom asking why he’d skipped therapy, no messages containing memes he pretends to find funny from Jared. Nothing. He isn’t surprised, but it hurts all the same. 

He takes his morning Xanax in hope of calming his still overwhelmed brain and closes his eyes, traps the tears inside. He listens to his racing heart and tries to count his breathing back to a sensible rate with limited success as he waits for the drugs to start their magic, to numb his anxious, spiralling mind, to make him a little better. To make him just a little less of the broken wreck he is.

Heidi is already in the kitchen when he makes it down. Her back is to the door as she stands by the sink, her hands clothed in yellow rubber gloves as she washes the plates and glasses and mugs that have collected there over the past few days. She’s muttering softly to herself as she cleans, her tone not quite upset, but not happy either.

“Mom?”

She startles a little at his call, her own words falling off mid-sentence, and then glances round and holds up the plastic container already in her yellow hands. It’s the bottom section of one of their lunch boxes, Evan realises after a moment, but which is a bit of a mystery; the bottoms are the same, the tops only distinguishable by the colour of the plastic clips used to secure the two halves together. His own has blue, which isn’t much of a surprise, and hers orange.

It’s her favourite colour, orange, she’s told him so before, and that makes sense he thinks, because it’s warm and bright and sunny, a happy colour, just like her when she hasn’t him to worry about. She doesn’t look happy now though; her expression is set and her eyebrows are furrowed over troubled eyes.

“Why was this still full, Evan?” she questions pointedly, tilting the bubble coated tupperware in his direction. Evan frowns and glances through the dining room door at his bag, still propped against the table leg where he had left it the night before. The main compartment is now unzipped, and despite the plastic tub being indistinguishable from her own, he knows it’s his she’s holding.

Dread accompanies the knowledge, and adrenaline promptly follows.

He has to fight the instinct to run.

“Oh, I- um, I-” he stutters instead as he flounders for an answer, his mind eddying uselessly and his heart thrumming uncomfortably despite the Xanax. He hadn’t even considered that she might want to wash the box when he had left it still full of uneaten lunch in his abandoned backpack, and so he has no idea at all what to tell her. He can’t tell her he didn’t eat it because he was much too busy stressing and fretting and battling anxiety to even consider putting sandwiches in his churning stomach, though, because that’s … that’s not what she would want to hear.

Inspiration eventually comes from a takeout box left on the counter, but he already knows it’s come much too late.

“I- Pizza. I got pizza with Jared, from the canteen. I, we, erm, we ate pizza.”

Heidi just looks at him, and for a moment Evan is sure she’s going to call him out on his lie, but, for some reason he doesn’t understand, she doesn’t. Instead she schools her expression and forces a smile, and nods.

“Oh, that’s great,” she says, tone filled with forced lightness, before she turns abruptly back to her washing up. “I’m glad you two are getting along again.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Evan agrees out of habit.

He fixes himself cereal as he ponders her easy acceptance of his lie and is mid-way through his bowl when he comes to the aching conclusion that she’d likely only believed it because believing the shitty, shitty lie was just so much easier that sorting the underlying problem that was her broken, mess of a son. He prods aggressively at the cereal with his spoon and tries to ignore the hurt in his heart. It’s always there, that and the guilt and the shame. Sometimes it’s just harder to ignore than others.

“Dr Sherman phoned whilst I was at work last night.”

Evan falls abruptly from his stumbling thoughts, pauses his task of separating the loops floating on the surface of his milk from the clumps they have formed. It’s a futile mission, something draws them back together like some sort of sideways, wheat-based gravity. There’s probably a name for it, but he doesn’t know it, and he doesn’t really care.

“He said you hadn’t turned up for your appointment.”

Heidi’s sitting at her seat at the table when he steals a glance up, her expression worn and a little cautious as she watches him over the steaming mug of coffee clasped in both hands. She looks almost uneasy, and Evan wonders if she’s been working herself up to asking him that question since he came down for breakfast. He wonders how he’s missed her sitting down too, wonders how lost he had become in his thoughts as he prodded at his food.

She’s still looking at him though, expecting an answer, and the thing is the answer he has isn’t one she’ll want to hear, so he finds his cereal again, resumes playing with the rapidly disintegrating loops because he’d much rather watch as they fragment into the milk than hold her gaze as he lies.

“I forgot.”

“You forgot?”

He can tell she’s frowning at him without looking up, he can hear the upset and confusion in her tone because forgetting isn’t what he does, he stresses too much about most events in his life to forget them, and he knows she’s knows that. He knows she knows he’s lying.

He knows what her frown looks like too, more familiar to him than the creases of his own palm, and so he knows there’s a ‘V’ formed between her brows and a pinch to her lips, and a rawness to her eyes as she learns a little more of how broken her little guy really is.

“Evan, we spoke about it at lunch, you said you’d get the bus.”

“I know. I know, I just- I forgot to get off the bus, is all.” He prods a little too aggressively at a loop, splintering it into soggy rubble.

Heidi takes a second to digest this, then sighs. It sounds a little frustrated. “I’ll phone the office in my break to see about booking another.” Her tone sounds frustrated too and Evan understands why entirely.

He nods anyway and mutters a ‘thanks’ in the direction of his bowl.

She nods too, and then, “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t pick you up from school yesterday.” Her tone is softer, words rushed and apologetic. “I know I said I would and-”

“It’s okay.”

“I shouldn’t-”

“Mom, really, it’s fine,” he interrupts again, and finally glances up from his abused cereal. Their eyes meet, and tired, hurting blue momentarily hold his anxious hazel before she smiles a forced, phoney smile and nods again says ‘okay’ despite both of them knowing it really isn’t okay at all. None of it is.

A moment passes, not quite uncomfortable but certainly not pleasant either. There’s a tension in the air, like there is when the clouds darken and the wind drops and you know the rain is going to start you just don’t know when.

It’s Heidi who breaks it.

“I’m going to make tacos for dinner tonight, we can eat them together, watch some TV,” she suggests in this too light voice dripping with forced eagerness. “How about it?”

Evan nods at his cereal. “Yeah, sounds- that sounds good.” It isn’t a lie, that does sound good, it’s just she’s promised that sort of thing so, so many times only to have to cancel that her words mean nothing. She’s probably going to end up working anyway, and Evan will spend his evening considering ordering pizza but lacking both the courage and the motivation.

“Great! It’s going to be a great end to a great day, I just know it!”

“For sure.” Evan nods with significantly less enthusiasm than his mom and prods at his food again. He should eat more, but instead of loops, the bowl is now filled with soggy fragments floating in gritty milk and that just isn’t at all appetising and he doubts he could bring himself to eat it even if his hunger wasn’t already long gone, his knotted stomach churning too restlessly for food.

“I love you, honey, you know that, right?” Heidi says suddenly, interrupting his thoughts, and her tone is soft, and tired, and almost a little desperate like it so often is when she says things like that. Like about how proud she is, or how happy he makes her, or how much she loves him, or some other nonsense like that. Evan doesn’t understand how she can say such things. He hates himself, and she should too. He deserves it.

“I’m going to brush my teeth,” he announces abruptly, eyes down as he avoids her gaze and pushes himself to his feet.

Heidi does nothing but watch silently, her eyes troubled and her teeth worrying her nails as he deposits his still half full bowl in the sink and bolts from the kitchen. 

Evan does brush his teeth when he gets upstairs, and only afterwards retreats to the safety of his blue walled sanctuary and closes the door behind him. He dithers for a minute in the middle of the room, and then, mind made up, heads quietly back downstairs in search of his backpack. Heidi, thankfully, seems too engrossed in her own thoughts as she stares out of the kitchen window, her undrunk coffee still in her hands, to notice him passing the doorway on his way to the dining room.

He settles on his bed once back in his room and pulls his laptop from his backpack. It boots slowly, just as it always does, and then once it’s on and logged into his desktop, he opens Word and then he sits statue still as he contemplates life and death and trees and the renewed throb in his arm, and stares at the curser flashing over empty white. His shaking hands hover over the keyboard, ready to type but his thoughts much too dark to put to paper, until Heidi pops her head around his doorframe and startles him from his spiralling.

“We’re going to have to leave early, the hospital called and- Oh, are you writing a letter?” She indicates the suddenly closed laptop on his knees. There’s a smile on her lips, finally genuine, finally hopeful, and Evan nods.

“I’m trying to be better,” he repeats, and it isn’t a lie, he is, even if he’s failing at it more than he’s ever failed at anything before.

Evan can’t decide if his second day back at school is better or worse than the first, and since the first was a train wreck, that isn’t a good thing at all. 

He gets there early, for a start, and ends up hiding in the toilets until a normal sort of time to be at school arrives, and that isn’t ideal. No one bothers him in the corridor, though, and no one tries to speak to him as he deposits his Monday lesson books into his locker, and that’s … that’s both a blessing and a curse, he decides, because on one hand he’s not left semi-hyperventilating, his heart thrumming in his throat as his anxious mess of a brain replays awkward, broken conversations over and over and over, and on the other, well, it kind of sucks when in a school of 700 people, not one has a single word to say to you.

Connor isn’t there either, or not that Evan can see, and he can’t even decide if that’s a thing to fret over or not. Connor has already said he skips school, he’d said so that Friday afternoon as they’d at under a tree, talking and comfortable and with neither of them dying, so maybe it’s nothing, but also … maybe it isn’t, maybe …. Evan tries not to think of the scars on his arms and the understanding in his mismatched eye and the unread text he had sent on the bus the day before. He tries to convince himself Connor is okay. He fails, but then, why wouldn’t he. He fails at everything.

There’s also the matter of the missing letter for his anxiety to torture him with, the letter Connor had taken, and the one Evan would really, really, really quite like back. It isn’t the sort of thing he wants people to see, people to read, because the thoughts he put into it, onto that piece of paper are not the sort of thoughts that he should be having. He does have them though, his thoughts are dark more often than they’re not and they spiral and eddy and end up in caverns they shouldn’t, caverns where they consider things that shouldn’t be considered such as the fragility of life and remaining painkillers burning a hole in his bedside cabinet and the idea of climbing trees higher and higher until the branches become thin and brittle and can’t support his weight.

Things such as letting go.

Evan rubs at his arm. It hurts in memory.

Or maybe it just hurts. It’s hard to tell.

Such dark, depressing, worrying thoughts don’t belong on paper though, and he knows he shouldn’t have put them there, knows he shouldn’t have pressed print. But he did, and he did again, and now they’re in a letter that Connor Murphy has, a letter Evan really, really hopes no one else will ever, ever see.

He isn’t hopeful, but then, why would he be.

Biology passes in a blur of exhaustion and anxiety but that’s okay because Evan can do biology. He’s good at biology. It’s one of the few things he’ll admit to himself he is good at.

He has Spanish in second period, though, which he really isn’t so good at, and the lesson is shittier than normal because, rather unexpectedly, Jared doesn’t sit diagonally behind him, close enough to talk but distant enough Evan doesn’t cramp his style, like he usually does. He sits across the room instead, and from there he spends the lesson avoiding Evan’s eye with impressive perseverance but glancing over when he thinks Evan isn’t looking and Evan doesn’t understand that at all. He frets instead of listening to the lesson, and by the time it has ended, he has no idea what they’ve been taught about or when the homework he vaguely recalls being set is due. He doesn’t know what on earth it is either, which doesn’t help.

He does manage to eat his lunch, though, which is an improvement over the day before, and although he ends up eating it alone, sheltering from the heat under the wispy branches of a weedy silver birch, he won’t have to lie to his mom about one more thing, and that’s something. He usually doesn’t mind eating alone all that much either, it’s a part of high school that he’s become used to over the past few years, and today it does give him a chance to cool off as he gets to shrug the hoodie he had put on that morning to cover the name on his cast from his shoulders and let the slight breeze cool his sweaty skin.

But despite the fact he doesn’t normally care all that much about eating alone, or he tells himself he doesn’t care all that much, and despite the break the solitude gives him from the heat, it kind of sucks.

Like, really sucks. Because although he’s used to it, to the solitude, although it had once been so bad he’d go to school for a month and speak to no one beside Jared, it’s a sudden, bitter blow to the hopefulness he had started the year with, and his heart kind of aches because of that.

Lunch ends with a bell, and he replaces the hoodie on his shoulders and the lunchbox in his bag and heads back towards the building and the 700 odd students inside who will ignore him and stare simultaneously. His stomach flutters in anticipation.

Math comes after lunch, and normally, in math, Evan sits next to Jared, which is fine, good, even, normally. Except, Jared is still set on ignoring him, and so Evan sits alone, the desk beside him empty, and spends the lesson fretting and trying to work out what on earth he has done to upset Jared without even speaking to him. It’s more of a mystery than the answers to the math problems he’s facing.

History passes with little that can be said about it, half because history is okay, not a lesson he loves but not one he hates, its one he can do even if he finds it boring, and half because he is still so tied up in his anxiety and Connor and the letter and the mystery that is Jared that he can barely focus on forcing his fingers to stop shredding his cast let alone concentrate on whatever Mrs Holden is telling them about too. It’s some sort of politics, he thinks, maybe.

He finds a text from his mom when he checks his phone as he walks to history to physics, and it explains she’s booked him an appointment for later that afternoon and apologises that she has let him know so late but she had work to do and so hadn’t found time to text until then. It’s followed by a second, hurriedly typed text that informs him that she will pick him up straight after school, and that just sends him spiralling again because he hasn’t a letter, well, there’s one still saved on his laptop but he hasn’t one he can show anyway, and he hasn’t another free before home time in which he can write another, lighter sounding one so he’s going to have to try and think of an excuse why he doesn’t have one to show for today or for yesterday either.

Physics passes in a blur; he’s much too busy trying not to hyperventilate to listen. 

Heidi comments on his hoodie as he gets into the car, and she leans over and rests the back of her hand to his forehead as she asks with a frown if he’s cold. He isn’t, he’s roasting, which probably does explain the deepening of her frown as she feels his temperature, but he can’t really say that without having to explain the hoodie, so he shrugs off her tender touch instead, and lies, and tells her he’s fine.

He isn’t sure she believes him.

He goes to therapy, and therapy itself is okay, somehow, because turns out Dr Sherman isn’t all that surprised that he hasn’t had time to type the two letters he should have for the first days back at school. He gives a reassuring smile and says he understands how busy school is, how difficult getting back into the routine of it can be, and instead suggests he tries to write the letters in the evening, a note of everything good that had happened.

He questions Evan on how he’s feeling though, both physically and not, and Evan lies, and says he’s fine despite being exhausted and anxious and hurting both inside and out. He says he’s fine, just a little tired maybe, and he doesn’t think Dr Sherman believes him at all. He doesn’t say anything to Evan about it, and they end the session and it’s all okay, but then afterwards he asks to speak to Heidi, and Evan has to take his turn sitting out in the waiting room whilst the adults talk about him. He gnaws at the nails on his good hand whilst he waits.

They take long enough that he has to move to those on the fingers sticking out of the cast.

Heidi doesn’t tell him what they talked about as she drives him home, but then, it isn’t as though he’s asked her to. He can’t find the courage. She asks about school instead, and then switches to telling him about her day and about Erica’s drama when she can’t get more than two words at a time from him in answer to her questions.

There’s pasta with sauce from a jar and meatballs from the freezer for dinner rather than the Taco Tuesday tacos he’d been promised because turns out Heidi has to work the evening shift too, and he ends up eating them alone because after the food is cooked, she doesn’t have enough time to eat before she has to leave to return to the hospital. Half of his own meal joins hers in the fridge rather than finding its way to his stomach, his gut suddenly churning much too nauseously at the realisation that he and his therapy appointment has resulted in her missing dinner to make adding more food a good idea.

Afterwards he attempts his homework, and he spends the first half an hour fretting that he doesn’t know what he’s meant to be doing for most of the lessons it had been set in because he’s spent the day too consumed with anxiety to listen, and then dedicates the second half hour to considering texting Jared and asking him what the homework is. He doesn’t text in the end; Jared doesn’t want to even look at him so why would he reply, and that thought just sets him spiralling again.

He gives up after that, goes to sit on his bed and struggles with the childproof medicine cap and then waits there for the Xanax to work. Once his breathing has calmed enough that he’s no longer dizzy when he stands, he heads to the bathroom and showers, washes away the dirt and sweat of the day and wishes he could wash away the memories and his anxiety and maybe even himself. How much easier would it be for everyone if he just dissolved in the slightly too hot deluge, if he disappeared down the drain. He wonders how long it would take anyone to notice if he did.

He doesn’t dissolve though, doesn’t disappear, and instead he gets out and dries himself and puts on his ratty pyjama bottoms and a soft, too big t-shirt. He unwraps the clingfilm from his cast and flattens his hair and brushes his teeth because he has to, because the world moves on even when he’s anxious and down and hurting inside, and so as long as he is yet to disappear, he has to move on too.

He goes back to his room, shuts himself in his blue walled haven, takes a painkiller for an arm that won’t stop aching, and afterwards, exhausted and lulled by medication, he sleeps.

Wednesday arrives and the halls are still bustling and noisy and crowded enough that his heart throbs in his chest and his back ends up aching from the tension in his shoulders and his broken arm sore from the jolts of collisions with other students, and Jared is still seemingly angry with him for something he doesn’t remember doing, or maybe not angry, exactly, but definitely _off_, and Connor is still missing, bunking, to the anger of Larry and the concern of his mother according to an overheard conversation between Zoe and a girl Evan recognises but cannot name.

The only positive point of the day Evan can find is that Alana briefly honours him with her company during their lunch break, and she comes to sit beside him under the wilting branches of the birch. It means he can’t take of his jumper, or Connor’s jumper, really, it was the only one he could find with a cuff big enough to fit over his cast and even then it still ends up stretched over the fibreglass, and her prattling does little to ease his anxiety because he keeps having to think of things to reply when she pauses in question, but its sweet of her to join him all the same. Alana is sweet in general, when he thinks about it, and understanding and helpful and kind, like, really kind, even if she can be a little (much) too intense at times.

Evan is in Chemistry when his phone buzzes in his pocket and when curiosity gets the better of him and he braves the consequences and sneaks a glance, he finds it’s Connor who has messaged him. And that’s … Evan doesn’t really understand that because he doesn’t understand where he stands with Connor. Despite what he wrote in his letter, the letter he still hasn’t got back, he now realises he doesn’t really understand Connor at all. There are similarities between them, for sure, they’re both struggling mental health wise, and with school too, and they both have shitty lives and shitty dads, but there are big, big differences between them. Connor is loud and bold and angry, like the name he’d scrawled over pristine fiberglass, and Evan’s an anxious, possibly depressed mess of a human being. At least his moods are constant, though, which is more than he can say for Connor’s, and the text, when he reads it, kind of confirms it.

**-**Wednesday 4 Sept. 13:47-

**Why did you jump?**

The words themselves are simple, unobtrusive, and yet the meaning behind them isn’t. Out of the blue questions about one’s failed suicide attempt can never be anything but obtrusive, and hurtful, and more than a little concerning and so Evan stares at the simple black words on the glowing white screen, his heart in his throat and an ache in his arm until his eyes blur and his hearing rings and he realises he’s forgotten how to breathe.

He remembers nothing of the remaining 13 minutes of the class, and when the hour strikes and the bell rings, he bolts from the classroom on numb legs and hurries to the toilets rather than onwards to geography. Thankfully, it’s empty.

The tiles are cold as he sits on them to write his reply, his back against the wall and plumbing digging into his spine. His fingers shake from more than anxiety.

**-**Wednesday 4 Sept. 14:01-

**Wjat do yoi mean? **

He ends up asking, despite knowing exactly what Connor is referring to.

**Arr you ok?**

**Connoe?**

The second text is sent seconds after the first, and the third only seconds after that, and then he stops himself from sending more, tells his anxious, troubled mind that Connor might just be busy, might be okay, and forces his thumb to lock his phone, and then he sits there, on the floor of the toilets with his head against the wall and the plumbing digging into his spine and his shitty, off brand cell phone clutched in his shaking hands so tightly his knuckles whiten and the broken bones of his left arm complain. It’s almost a wonder the screen doesn’t crack.

His breathing is choppy and useless, a panicked wheeze through chapped lips, and his heart is racing and awfully loud as it thunders in his ears, throbs in his throat, and after a moment, he forces himself to put the phone down and retrieve a Xanax from the tub he keeps in his backpack for emergencies and tries desperately not to use because what sort of failure can’t even make it through a day at school without panicking, without freaking out, without dissolving into a anxious, broken wreck.

The phone rattles violently against the tiles as it receives a text.

Evan startles and the small white medicine bottle with a childproof cap slips from his sweaty, shaking fingers, falling to the floor with a clatter. Blue, oblong pills scatter over dirty tiles and a shaky cry leaves his lips.

He leaves them there though, picks up the still vibrating phone instead, unlocks it with difficulty. The message app is already open when the trees of his lock screen vanish.

**-**Wednesday 4 Sept. 14:09-

**It’s not a difficult fucking question Hansen**

**Why’d you jump?**

**Because jumping is fucking dumb**

**I didn’t j fell**

**It’s unreliable.**

**Especially when you only fall 30 feet.**

The messages come in quick succession, and then there’s a pause, where Evan reads what he’s received since he typed his mess of a reply and tries to ignore the sharp sting of the brutal word, before another text is sent.

**Bullshit **

And it takes Evan a moment to realise Connor’s latest message is a reply to his because he’s apparently finally read what he’d sent and he’s calling him out on his lie. Evan pauses too, tries to school his thoughts back from the spiral of panic they’re caught in, tries to work out what the fuck he’s meant to do. Find someone more qualified than himself to deal with the situation, probably, but that isn’t what he wants to do, that isn’t … he can’t do that, he can’t. He tries to calm himself instead, puts his thumbs to the screen. 

**Connnpr are uou ok?**

**Fuck off**

**no**

**don’t**

**Andwer my question **

Evan looks at the text. He contemplates lying. It would be futile, he knows.

**I didny jum[ the branch brokl and I caight the one**

** be;ow and I wss going to clinb up onto it bit then**

** j didn’t **

**You let go**

**Yes. Now anseer mine?**

**Are you ok?**

**Congratulations**

**You managed a whole text with no typos**

Evan ignores the jab, or maybe the genuine praise, he doesn’t know which and he doesn’t really care because there are much, much more important things to worry about that typos made by shaking, sweaty hands hindered by a rigid cast and shitty auto correct.

**Connor [lease**

**Are you olay?**

**Whrre are uou?**

A reply doesn’t come instantly like it does with the other texts, leaving Evan sat on the floor of the toilets and stressing over the apparently dubious mental state of the troubled boy who had saved his life. He checks the phone obsessively as he waits, the screen flicking on and off and on and off but always void of notifications. The Xanax is coming into help now though, he can feel it dulling his thoughts, diluting his anxiety, stilling his shaking hands. It doesn’t solve the worry though, about Connor, front and foremost, but also about himself, and Jared, and his mom and their financial enigma and about Geography which is passing by without him. He wonders if they’ve even noticed he isn’t there. He wonders if they will care if they do. He doubts they will.

He jumps as the phone buzzes in his hands but manages not to let it join the small white tub and the blue pills that have spilt from it on the floor.

**-**Wednesday 4 Sept. 14:26-

**Can you drive?**

Evan considers the unexpected question for a moment and then decides on the answer. Technically, it isn’t a lie, and he thinks it’s probably the answer Connor wants to hear.

**Yes**

A pause follows, and then,

**Your tree**

Evan lets out a shaky sob of a breath at the words, at the image they paint in his head, before he realises he hasn’t got it quite right. Connor is at his tree, yes, or not his tree, but the tree he had fallen from, he thinks, because its either that or the one he had been sat under in the park by his house and that just doesn’t feel quite right, but despite his apparently dubious mental state, Evan knows he isn’t planning on jumping. It’s too unreliable, he’s already said so, he isn’t a failure like Evan is.

But he is in danger, Evan knows, he’s a danger to himself, because although he can’t really remember the time he had spent on the forest floor, some parts are clear, important parts, like Connor’s upset and understanding and him saying he’d tried before and saying he’d try again, try alone. And he remembers a rattle, a sound Connor had made when he’d taken off his hoodie that Evan hadn’t been able to place before but can now. It’s the noise of a medicine pot, a little white tub filled with unobtrusive little white pills and sealed with a childproof cap for safety because what’s in them can be dangerous. What’s in them can kill. And that is exactly what Evan is worried about Connor trying to achieve with them.

He lurches to his feet, scattering pills over grimy tiles, and flings his backpack onto his shoulder with his bad arm. It throbs in protest but that doesn’t matter. What matters is Connor, and the texts he is typing with his dominant, working hand as he rushes out of the bathroom and along the corridor in the direction of the exit. 

**Please dpntt do anythi g before I get yhere**

**Please**

He isn’t sure the texts will be enough, but he really, really hopes they are.


	7. A Few Lost Leaves and a Broken Branch

The bus ride from the high school to Ellison State Park might possibly have been the longest bus ride Evan has ever taken in his life.

Well, no, actually that isn’t quite true, or true at all, even. It isn’t that long a bus ride, it’s a shorter journey than the bus ride from home to the park, a journey he’s made countless times over summer alone before he fell from a tree and fucked up his arm and their finances and his mom’s life just a little more.

But it feels longer. It feels like it takes forever and Evan spends the entire forever-length journey millimetres from panicking, his heart in his throat and his breathing choppy and useless enough Jared would laugh and ask if he’s hyperventilating and then pass a paper bag if he was there, if he wasn’t angry about something Evan doesn’t remember doing. His restless, anxious fingers ruin the edge of fibreglass that crosses his palm, leaving the threads in sweaty tatters he knows he will hate himself for later. He’s currently much, much too worried about Connor to care about it though, and about the stares of the few other people on the bus he knows this time aren’t imagined because who wouldn’t stare at a sweaty, red, mess of a teenager who’s apparently struggling to breathe.

He’d take a Xanax to muffle his racing, eddying thoughts and calm his breathing and his heart rate if he hadn’t just taken one, and if he hadn’t left the rest of his pills and the tub they came from scattered on the grimy tiles of the boys’ bathroom in the science block which is a mess to fret over for another day.

He tries to text Connor as he sits there, practically bouncing in his seat with pent up, anxious energy but between the shaking of his hands and the cast on his wrist and the jolting of the bus he only manages to get three texts correct enough to be understandable before the constant anxious nausea churning in his gut and the panicked butterflies and the travel sickness brought about by texting on a bouncy, moving bus team up together and leave his stomach feeling unstable enough that he’s sure he’ll vomit if he tries to type another message. He closes his eyes instead, leans his head back and breathes through his nose as he begs his lunch to stay down and the phone in his hand to vibrate with an incoming text he knows will be from Connor.

In the end, his stomach obeys but his phone does not, and so by the time the bus pulls into the stop beside the park, he’s vibrating with anxiety and tense with panic but at least not wearing his own vomit.

It’s almost odd being back at the park, he realises through the mess of emotions, because although it’s a place he knows so well, he hasn’t really been back since the day he fell and that’s changed it a bit. It’s no longer the peaceful, beautiful haven of quiet that warms his insides and stills his sweaty hands and releases the tension from his shoulders as it has been for years. It holds a different feeling now, one of regret and wrongness and failure. One of pain.

His arm aches in memory.

His heart aches too. 

He doesn’t stop to consider the aching though, to consider the memories or the pain or the self-hatred that being in the park has brought back into the forefront of his mind, instead he runs through the gates and into the parking lot and then, on a whim, drops his backpack beside a familiar blue car as he passes. It’s the only car there beside the Head Ranger’s truck that Tom drives to work every day.

Running is easier without the backpack, but after nearly a month of doing little other than rest, it’s still an effort for his already tired body and before he’s made it far into the forest, Evan’s legs are weak and aching and his heart is racing and his breaths are gasped through parted lips. He’s much too hot inside the dark hoodie that slips from his shoulders as he runs, and his heavy footfalls aren’t helping his already painful arm as each step sends a sharp jolt through the still healing bones.

None of that matters though, none of it, and he keeps running, keeps his feet pounding along the worn, dried mud path he knows so well until he reaches the fallen, half-dead oak that signifies his turn off from the main path towards his tree.

Or not his tree?

He doesn’t want it to be his tree, doesn’t like what that signifies.

He runs towards the tree though, down a path not made by rangers or walked by others but known as well to him as the back of his hand, until he finds what he thinks is the tallest oak in Ellison State Park. It looks almost the same as he remembers save for a few lost leaves and a broken branch and a boy, Connor, sat beneath, his back against the trunk and his knees bent up before him as though he’s trying to make himself as small and compact as his long, gangly limbs will allow. It’s as though he thinks that if he can make himself small enough, then maybe he might just disappear. 

“Connor!”

The call falls wheezily from his lips with none of the strength he had intended, the words caught up in his lungs’ desperate battle for air.

Connor must have heard though, either the call or the dull thud of his bland, grey New Balance against the grass as he ran, as he glances up, eyes angry and red, and then lets his gaze fall back to his hands. Or no, not to his hands, but rather to the small, white bottle he holds in them, just about visible behind the darkness of his skinny jeans.

Evan’s stomach does a backflip at the sight of it.

“Connor, are you- have you-” 

“Didn’t think you’d actually come,” Connor interrupts, tone hollow. The interruption come more as though he hasn’t registered anyone else was speaking rather than to be rude and his eyes stay fixed on his lap. There’s a joint held down by the medicine bottle too, Evan realises, clutched between the forefinger and thumb on his right hand. The glowing red end rests much too close to his leg for comfort, but he doesn’t seem to care.

Evan in that moment doesn’t care either.

There are other, much more important drugs to deal with.

More important things too, things like keeping Connor talking, engaged, like finding out if he’s actually swallowed any of what’s in the bottle in his lap.

“I what- why, I said I was coming,” Evan stammers breathlessly, and stops his approach to end up standing beside the trunk Connor is sat against.

Connor shrugs and scoffs a chocked laugh.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d actually manage to skip school without having some sort of breakdown.”

Evan ignores the sting of that and instead watches as Connor lifts his head and rolls it lethargically back against the trunk of the tree until he’s looking up at Evan with those big, painfully angry mismatched eyes. They look sad and a little bitter, too, and up close, Evan realises how awfully bloodshot they are.

“Besides-” he pauses to take a drag of the joint, holds his breath for a second, then blows smoke into the air. “-life is full of disappointment.”

Evan grimaces at both the smell and the words. They’re true, and he understands the bitterness with which they are said entirely. His own life is full of them, always has been. There had been the disappointment that came when he was sitting by the window, waiting for a dad that never came, and then the phone as he waits for him to call. The disappointment of Jared’s new plans that never seemed to involve him, and that of his mom working extra shifts for as long as he can really remember, earning the money they so desperately need but leaving him with his grandma, or Janet Kleinman, or later alone with a $20 bill in place of the tacos she’d promised they could cook together for dinner.

That isn’t important now though, he isn’t important now. Connor is, and the small, white bottle he holds in his hands.

“I- Connor, have you, have you taken any.” He doesn’t clarify of what, but he doesn’t need to.

Connor, expression apathetic, looks down at the tub in his hands. It rattles quietly as he rolls it between them with his joint still held between his thumb and forefinger and Evan kind of reasons that means no, he hasn’t, the bottle likely wouldn’t still be full with the cap neatly on if he had, but Connor still hasn’t said he hasn’t, and he isn’t all that sure he trusts his logic when it comes to this sort of thing.

“Connor?” he prompts after a moment, question gentle as he seeks confirmation. “Have you-”

“No, I haven’t, okay?” Connor snaps abruptly, apathy suddenly replaced with an irritation Evan doesn’t understand.

“Sorry, sorry, I just-” he starts, but Connor clearly isn’t listening because he sighs harshly and pushes himself to his feet. He’s taller than Evan remembered, intimidating almost, and Evan takes an involuntary step backwards.

Connor glowers, eyes burning.

“Here,” he spits as he throws the bottle in Evan’s direction. Evan fumbles the bottle, misses the catch. The cap stays on when it hits the parched grass, landing amongst the spent ends of joints that have littered the floor. “Now you can go, your job is done, your debt or whatever the fuck it is that makes you think you need to do this repaid.” He pushes past close enough that their shoulders knock despite the large gaps between the trees.

Evan doesn’t fall this time, doesn’t rub his shoulder or the jolted wrist beneath his cast. Instead he turns and says, “I’m not- that’s not why I’m here,” with, despite the stutter, more certainty than he has said anything else in a while because for the first time in nearly as long, what he’s said isn’t a lie, or based off a lie, and it isn’t something he’s unsure about either. He hasn’t come to save Connor because Connor saved him.

Connor turns back to face him. “Then why?” he demands. “Why the fuck are you here?”

Evan doesn’t really know why he is there exactly; he just knows he needs to be because Connor Murphy doesn’t deserve the fate he’d chosen for himself. And he kind of wonders if Connor knows that too, just a little, because he’d texted and he’d told Evan where he was, and Evan kind of reasons if he didn’t want saving just a little bit, he wouldn’t have sent those messages. He also reasons that if Connor Murphy wanted to take his own life with a small, white bottle of pills secured with a plastic childproof cap, he probably would have done so already.

“Because … because I don’t think you should die today,” Evan tells him, and that isn’t a lie either, not at all, because Connor may be rude and angry and at times terrifying and apparently kind of violent, but he’s also the sort of person who will sit beside another as they die so they don’t die alone, gives them his hoodie and keep them talking in hope they don’t. He’s the sort of person who cries at someone else’s pain, hurting when they hurt. He’s empathetic, and courageous, and thoughtful, and although he thinks he’s a bad person, and Evan knows others do too, he knows Connor isn’t. And he knows he doesn’t deserve to die.

Connor looks at him for a long, hard moment, and then sighs.

“Just fuck off home,” he says, tone weaker than before, anger dissipated and leaving bitter hopelessness in its place. He turns again, and heads away from the tree in a direction Evan knows won’t lead him to a path. He deliberates for a moment, and then stoops and picks up the bottle and pockets it before following Connor deeper into the forest.

Connor doesn’t turn to look at him as he falls into step but he doesn’t protest or yell or shove Evan to the hard, dry ground. He just keeps walking instead, walking with his shoulder curled and his hands fisted and his head hanging so far forwards his mattered waves fall in front of his face like a shield, so Evan takes that as some sort of agreement. Or not agreement, but acceptance, maybe.

They pass through the trees together, winding a route even Evan hasn’t walked before but one he knows is heading in a direction the don’t want to head.

The atmosphere is tense, like the air before the rain, and Evan is tense, too, his shoulders tight in concern and anxiety and something like fear that the storm that is Connor will crack and rage or, worse, will pass by and peter from existence.

He’s tense to the extent that a pinched ache is growing in the knotted muscles of his back. And that isn’t entirely unusual, he’s stressed often enough that he’s familiar with the ache brought about by tense muscles, so used to standing with his abused spine bent, his shoulders curled in as though maybe if he makes himself small enough then no one will notice him, that the twinge brought on by his awful, awful posture is a feeling he’s all but used to. He considers rolling his shoulders out, straightening his spine as his mom tells him to when she catches him wincing, an arm bent up behind his back, but he doesn’t.

He just keeps walking instead. 

They tread in silence through the still leafy oaks and birches and evergreen pines because although Evan’s anxious, fretting, spiralling thoughts tell him he really ought to ask Connor what’s wrong, why he wanted to do what he very nearly did, he finds himself lacking the courage. He knows Connor wouldn’t want that anyway, he wouldn’t want to talk, and so Evan doesn’t ask and Connor doesn’t say anything either and they walk on and on in silence instead. Around them, the forest isn’t silent, there’s the crunch of their shoes on dry, brittle grass and the early fallen leaves and the song of the afternoon birds and the soft, quiet rustle of the trees, sounds so peaceful and soft and quiet they seem almost jarring compared to the tension and anger that follows them.

It rolls off Connor in waves, a seething fury seen in the hunch of his shoulders and his tightly clenched fists and the set of his jaw that Evan doesn’t quite understand. He can’t work out who Connor is angry at, whether it’s himself or his family or Evan or just life in general, but the anger is there. Despite the tension and the fury, Connor’s hands tremble, the ebbing joint balanced between the first and second finger of his right hand quivering too, and Evan can’t quite work out if that’s something to do with the drugs or if he’s more shaken by what happened than he’s letting on.

Not that Evan is all that sure what really has happened.

Connor’s here at the park, before sat under the tree he himself fell from, the tree he very nearly died under, and he’s here with means and motive and opportunity, and yet, he hasn’t done what he seems to have come here to do. He’s got high instead, high enough that he doesn’t want to drive himself home, Evan guesses, and that’s … It’s definitely a relief that Connor has taken weed instead of sleeping pills, and it it’s good he texted instead of staying alone with his thoughts, but that he’s ended up here at all is really, really not ideal and Evan doesn’t know what to do about that and that isn’t helping the fear and anxiety and dread swirling in his already nauseous gut.

He feels sick, with worry or stress or exhaustion or illness he doesn’t know, but he does know that doesn’t really matter. It isn’t him that matters at all.

It is him who eventually, after uncountable minutes of tense, silent walking, finds the courage to break the uncomfortable, angry silence between them.

“This isn’t- Um, it’s not the way back,” he mutters, voice breaking a little as it does when he only half has the confidence to speak. Connor says nothing in response, doesn’t even take his gaze up from the floor, so Evan takes that as a hint and says nothing more. He resumes ruining the fingernail on ring finger on his good hand, then quickly switches to the pinkie at a sting and a taste of iron.

The silence returns, but the tension has somehow lessened a fragment, and although Connor’s shoulders are still raised, hackles up, they’re not so tight as the were before. A minute passes, and then he uncurls his right fist and takes a drag of his joint. There’s very little of it left and Evan finds himself wondering just how much he’s smoked in the hour and a bit he’s been sat below the tree. There had certainly been a fair few butts on the floor and he seems a little sluggish despite his anger, a little less coordinated, a little _off_. 

Another few seconds pass and then, quite suddenly, Connor sighs. Or exhales sharply really, because smoke from his joint comes out along with air.

“I read your note.”

Evan startles a little.

“My note?” he asks, a furrow between his brows at the abrupt start of conversation and the apathetically spoken words.

Connor sighs again, this time a little impatiently.

“Your note, your letter, your whatever the fuck that was you printed the other day.” He waves a hand lazily, indicating etcetera. The smoke from his joint swirls lightly in the air with the movement.

It takes Evan a moment to understand what Connor really means by ‘note’, but then his stomach clenches and his heart squeezes painfully and his breathing catches in his throat.

“Oh, no, no, that wasn’t- that wasn’t a note, it wasn’t-” he blurts, tongue tripping over itself in a rush to deny what Connor has assumed. “Um, that’s … I have to write them for therapy? The letters. They’re, um, pep talks. Like ‘Dear Evan Hansen, today is going to be a good day and here’s why’? That- that sort of thing.” The words come out in such a garbled rush it seems to take Connor a moment to decipher what he’s said, and then, rather unexpectantly, he laughs. And it isn’t a cruel laugh, more an uncontrollable bubble of disbelief.

“Fuck, Hansen. That’s a fucking depressing pep talk.”

Evan’s gaze finds his feet. “I know.”

“Like, fuck. I thought it was a note.” Connor laughs again, and again it’s without malice, so unlike the sniggers he gets from Jared. “That could genuinely have been a suicide note.”

“Yes, I know, I know.” Evan snaps. “I messed up. I’m messed up. And it was awful and depressing and-” he breaks of sharply, counts his breathing and tries to calm his heart a little He realises he’s rubbing at his cast through his jumper, the aching arm beneath held bracingly to his stomach and forces his hand away, the restless, anxious fingers finding a belt loop of his khakis through the blue polo instead. Connor waits patiently, takes a drag of his joint. “It wasn’t meant to be like that, it was just- It was a really bad day, okay.”

“No shit.”

Evan coughs a scoff but says nothing in reply hoping the conversation will end. He wonders how the conversation has made it back to him again when really, they should be talking about Connor and the bottle of pills he was rolling between his hands as he sat beneath a tree. Beneath Evan’s tree, as he calls it.

He won’t want to talk about it though, Evan knows, but that doesn’t help. That doesn’t help him at all.

“I didn’t think you’d remembered,” Connor says, interrupting his thoughts. His tone is suddenly abrupt, not angry like before but demanding. “You said you hadn’t remembered.”

No, not demanding.

Accusing.

Evan finds his shoulders tighten defensively. 

“Remembered what?”

“‘All my hope was pinned on Connor, who I thought I understood and who understood me,’” Connor quotes with impressive accuracy, and Evan still doesn’t really understand the anger behind the words just like he hadn’t understood Connors anger what feels like a lifetime ago back in the computer room. “You were talking about this,” he indicates around them with an ungainly wave, “weren’t you?”

And it takes Evan a moment to fully understand what Connor is referring to. And then rather suddenly his anger as he’d recited the sentence of the letter he had chosen to quote kind of makes sense too, because although Connor had told him about his problems with his family and himself and his previous attempts and his vague plans for the future, for if he wanted to try again, maybe he hadn’t really intended for that all to be remembered, for it to be known at all. Maybe-

“Did you only tell me that stuff because you thought I was going to die?”

Connor stops abruptly, expression twisted.

“What the fuck? No, that’s … fuck. No.” He sounds aghast at the suggestion, and his expression is equally horrified and perhaps, just maybe, a little guilty too. His pace is faster when he starts onwards again, enough so that Evan has to briefly jog so as not to be left behind. “I just … I didn’t think you’d remember. And then, you did, clearly, even though you’d said you didn’t.” His tone hardens a little at the end, accusing once again.

“Sorry,” Evan finds himself stuttering automatically. “I really don’t remember all that much of it. I just … there’s bits though, like I kind of remember what we talked about for some of it, and other, um, other things. Like – like you gave me your jumper, and um, um…” He breaks off, swallows hard. His eyes are fixed on the floor and his right hand has somehow found its way back to the cast pressed against his stomach. 

“You don’t like talking about it,” Connor says, an observation rather than a question. It’s a very, very correct observation though; Evan would much rather think about pretty much anything else than what he did in that forest. Sometimes it’s hard not to think about it though, because his thoughts aren’t his own, they eddy and spiral and end up places he doesn’t want them to, because he has therapy and Dr Sherman seems to want to take him to places such as those, places he doesn’t admit he has, because he wants to fix him and accepting is the first step or some other bullshit like that, because there’s a near constant ache in his arm reminding him of what happened, of what could have been.

“No, I- I don’t really want to think-” Evan stops as they emerge from a clearing to find a small river. It’s one he recognises, and one he knows will lead them back to Connors car. A car he isn’t all that sure Connor should be driving as Evan’s pretty sure he’s stoned right now but that’s a problem for later. “We should- um, this way.” He points to the right along the river bank, and Connor doesn’t object, follows his directions instead.

“So, why were you- are you okay?”

Connor’s eyes flick over.

“You took the opportunity.” Connor says bluntly. There’s no malice to his tone though, and Evan has started to come to the conclusion that although Connor is angry and violent and can very easily go on the offensive if he feels threatened, he is not one to be unkind for the sake of it. He isn’t a bad person. Just one desperately in need of some help. Help that Evan is sure he cannot provide.

“What?” he asks, realising that he’s yet to reply.

Connor shoots him a glance. “To change the topic.”

“Oh, well, um, I thought I should probably ask seeing as, um, you know …”

“Seeing as you found me beneath your tree with a bottle of sleeping pills on a possible mission to take my own life?”

“Um, yeah,” Evan agrees, quietly. Nervously. A moment of silence passes. He rallies his courage again. “So, um, are you? Okay, that is?”

Connor glances across, the eyebrows over his manic eyes raised in disbelief and huffs a laugh void of humour. Evan would laugh at himself too, if he was in Connor’s position because sort of stupid question was that, why on earth would he be okay, but he isn’t this time, it isn’t him in need of help, it’s him trying to provide it.

Connor snorts a laugh and raises the joint to his lips again. He inhales sharply, then exhales grey smoke in a stormy, quickly disappearing cloud. Another drag follows moments later, and another, and then with the cherry red glow of the joint biting at his fingers, he flicks the end into the river. It doesn’t sink, sits on the surface instead as it gets taken downstream and Evan thinks he’d probably care about its impact on the wildlife that call the water home if he wasn’t too busy trying to work out what on earth to say to help the troubled boy beside him.

If he wasn’t too busy trying not to spiral as he struggles with the enigma that is Connor Murphy because although he knows Connor is struggling too, and he kind of knows why, he has no idea what he can do solve anything at all. He doesn’t think there is anything he can do, he’s not exactly in a great place himself right now and it’s hard enough to talk his own mind out of darkness let alone someone else’s and he isn’t really equipped to help Connor even if he was. Connor needs help, like actual help he thinks, from someone who knows what to do lighten his thoughts, to calm his anger, to lessen the load on his already straining shoulders. And that isn’t Evan.

And he kind of knows what he could do, how he could get Connor the help he needs, but telling someone what happened, what he found Connor trying to do isn’t an option either because Connor found him in a much, much worse situation and he hasn’t told, and so Evan knows he can’t either.

He can’t.

He just can’t.

And although he doesn’t think Connor was ultimately going to do anything under that tree than smoke enough weed to make brownies for a football team because he would probably have done so if he was going to, that doesn’t mean he won’t try again, that another day won’t be just as bad and he’ll drive to the forest and find the tree and swallow the pills he hadn’t had the courage to today.

And so, in the end, Evan realises the only way he can help is to take away Connor’s means, to not give back the unobtrusive pills in the small white medicine bottle prescribed to a Mrs C. Murphy, and although he doesn’t really know if that’ll help, it’s all he can think of doing.

And somehow, from there, from the knowledge that he can’t give back the medicine, his thoughts wander over to the place he tries not to let them.

And he considers the pills in a small, white bottle burning a hole in his hoodie pocket. He considers taking them home and hiding them in the top drawer of his bedside cabinet where he knows his mom won’t look because she’s the sort of parent who respects the privacy of her son. He considers keeping them there, just in case there comes a day where he just can’t face it any longer. When he can’t face the anxiety or the loneliness or the knowledge of what he is doing to his mother, the burden of him and the mess he has become dulling her from sunny orange to worried, tired grey.

Evan’s hand is still in his pocket, the smooth plastic reassuringly there against his shaking, sweaty fingers. He’s considered pills before, briefly, before realising that he never has enough Xanax to do himself all that much damage, and the few packets of left over drugs from past prescriptions and the out of date inhaler he still has from when they’d thought he’d had asthma rather than crippling anxiety resulting in panic attacks severe enough that he’d forget the basics of survival wouldn’t be any help in that sense either. The inhaler had been followed by therapy, and then by therapy and drugs, and then therapy and different drugs when they realised the first set of drugs gave him headaches, and that, that eventually helped, just a little. Made it all just a little more bearable. 

He’d never really looked into it all that much though, in to drugs, because he hadn’t really ever planned anything exactly, he’d never actually been intending to do it, and because if he was to, he wouldn’t want to die choking on his own vomit. Although, maybe, maybe that isn’t all that important any more. Maybe…

He feels in his pocket for the bottle, checks it’s still there, feels the weight of the sleeping pills Connor had stolen from his mother. It’s heavy. Full, maybe. Dangerous, probably.

Enough to take him, he thinks.

No. He doesn’t think, he_ knows_, because Connor had them with him for this very purpose and although Connor is a mess too, he isn’t a failure like himself. Connor wouldn’t have been trying with them if they weren’t.

He thinks about it for a moment. Considers it.

“Does your mom need these back?” he blurts, surprising himself. He holds up the white, childproof bottle in his left hand.

Connor turns to look at him. He glances at the bottle, expression carefully blank, apathetic save for a hint of confusion.

“They’d have noticed I had them if she did.”

Evan nods once, glances at the bottle. The white of it matches the white of the cast bracing his messily broken arm. It aches. It has almost constantly over the past few days, a painful, mocking reminder of what he did.

Of what he tried to do.

He deliberates, then stops and Connor stops too. There’s a frown on his lips. It no longer seems angry.

“Hansen?”

Evan says nothing. He doesn’t trust his voice.

His hands shake as he struggles with the plastic childproof cap but eventually it comes unstuck.

Connor watched silently as Evan tips the bottle, sending little blue and white caplets raining down into the idle stream below. They don’t dissolve, not at first, but drift off downstream instead.

Eventually they will dissolve though, and Evan knows it isn’t good for the river or the plants or the fish, but he thinks they’ll probably do much less damage there than if he lets Connor take them back, and he really isn’t all that sure he trusts himself with them either.

“You know that’s bad for the wildlife,” Connor comments dryly as he watches them drift away, and Evan finds himself looking up from the river in surprise.

“Yeah, I know, I just …”

“You don’t trust me with them,” Connor finishes for him, and there’s no longer anger in his tone, just exhaustion and a hollow sort of despondence.

“No, I don’t,” Evan admits. He pauses then sighs and says, “but I don’t, um, I don’t trust myself with them either if- if that’s any better.”

Connor expression is curiously unreadable before a small, sad smile quips his pale lips.

“We’re completely fucked up, you know.”

He makes it sound almost as though they’re discussing the sky on a particularity overcast day rather than stolen drugs and suicide and Evan can’t tell if that makes it better or worse.

“Yeah,” he agrees softly as the fingers of his right hand skim the fibreglass bracing his left. “I guess we are.”

They walk a little further along the small stream until the time comes for them to part with it and follow a sign-marked trail back towards the car park. The loss of the gurgling of the stream and the gentle crash of water over rocks leaves a sudden silence between them. Although the air between them is still heavy with memory of what has happened and anticipation of what is to come, it is at least no longer tense and the lack of works now comes more from pensiveness than anger.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Evan finds the courage to ask eventually, soft voice breaking in uncertainty.

Connor glances up from his feet. He takes a moment to digest what has been said and then sighs. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing worth saying.”

Evan doesn’t reply instantly, considering the words instead. He understands them entirely, understands the feeling his words, his opinion mattering so little. 

“Everything is worth saying if you want it to be said,” he settles on eventually. 

Connor shoots him a curious look. Their eyes catch, mismatched holding hazel. Both sets are tired.

He shrugs, narrow shoulders jolting.

“There’s nothing to say,” he repeats, voice weary, despondent, and this time Evan kind of understands what he means. There’s nothing to say because nothing has changed. 

“I’m sorry,” he finds himself saying, honest and sad and hurting for the boy beside him. He half expects Connor to reprimand his apology as he had done so before, but he doesn’t. Maybe he realises it isn’t said in his usual obsessive need apologise but rather in sympathy. In understanding.

Instead he nods, and then asks, “Do you?” moments later.

“Want to talk?”

Connor hums in confirmation.

“You already know I don’t,” Evan restates and Connor nods again beside him.

“Okay,” he accepts.

They walk the rest of the long way back in silence, and by the time they reach the faded green entrance sign Evan is all too familiar with, he’s completely exhausted both physically and otherwise. His legs are weak, and his hands are shaking, and he longs for the day to be over or better still never to have happened. But that isn’t how time works, and so the day isn’t over, and what has happened has happened even if he wishes it hadn’t.

He wishes there was anything he could do to help, wishes he could ease Connor’s struggling, wishes he could make his world even a little better, a little less hopeless than it seems to be. He wishes he could ease his own struggling too. Wishes he could ease his mother’s. He knows how. He tries not to think of it.

Connor looks exhausted too, completely and utterly drained. His posture is hunched, expression blank behind the wall of hair, but as he walks from the forest, he lifts his head, his mismatched eyes leaving the ground they have been focused on for so long as he raises his face to the sky. The warm, late afternoon sun lights his skin, makes it look just a little less pale than it had before.

Evan tilts his head too, appreciating the warmth and light after the darkness, and for a moment, he’s back under the chestnut in the park near his house, Connor laying with him, both of them enjoying the sun as they discuss school and shitty fathers and the intricacies of the motivations of Professor Severus Snape. 

He’s a complicated fellow, they had decided, and Evan’s starting to realise Connor Murphy is too.

Together they cross the abandoned parking lot to the small blue car now alone on the gravel, and for the first time that afternoon, the question of how they’re getting home crosses Evan’s mind. Connor shouldn’t be driving, that much is clear, he’s in no state mentally, and considering how much he has smoked, probably in an even worse condition physically.

Evan can drive, he’s passed his test, but he doesn’t drive, partially because there isn’t often a car for him to drive but mostly because he’s a nervous wreck behind the wheel. Well, even more of a wreck than normal.

Driving is what he might have to do today though, he realises, and he wonders if that’s what Connor had been implying when he typed those final few texts earlier that afternoon. He kind of hopes it was because he has neither the courage nor the energy to protest if Connor decides he is driving and he’s struggling to find enough of either to bring to topic up at all both because he’s a nervous mess of a person who can’t stand even the possibility of confrontation and because if he does, it means he’ll have to drive, and he really isn’t sure he can handle that right now.

In the end, he doesn’t get a choice.

“You’re driving,” Connor orders monotonously when they reach the car, throwing the keys across just as Evan is stooping down to retrieve his backpack. He ends up having to retrieve the keys from the gravel too, half because he has less hand-eye coordination than a blind fish, and half because Connor’s throw was just as bad. The small fragment of his brain that isn’t suddenly fretting about both the idea of driving and the idea of Connor driving vaguely wonders if Connor’s aim is always so appalling or if it’s due to the collection of joints he’s smoked since he made his way into the forest however many hours ago.

Evan mutters an agreement despite his reeling and gets in on the driver’s side because although he’s an anxious wreck of a person who can barely make it off his driveway without needing a Xanax and although he hasn’t driven in months and has a messily fractured arm and a cast splinting his wrist, realistically him driving them home still seems an option less likely to result in their untimely car-crash related deaths than the alternative.

Not that untimely car-crash related deaths would be unwanted, he realises, and he considers that point as he gets into the car. He wonders what would happen if they did crash and they did die, how easy, how simple, how-

Evan shakes the unproductive thoughts from his head and puts the keys into the ignition and starts the engine and thinks about driving instead as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road, concentrates on his speed and his signals and not panicking and not driving into oncoming traffic despite the little, niggling voice at the back of his mind that has decided it’s the right thing for him to do.

He doesn’t though, and so they don’t meet their untimely car-crash related deaths, and so they make it to Connor’s house sat in mutual silence save for Connor’s monotone directions.

Evan pulls cautiously onto the driveway, carefully parking in front of the neat, well cared for house between a shiny dark coupe and the an equally new and equally shiny but slightly larger red SUV and then turns off the engine. It seems unnaturally quiet without the soft, mechanical purr.

For a moment, neither move, neither speak, and then Connor unbuckles his seatbelt and opens the door of the car. Evan retrieves his tatty backpack from the back seat and then follows him out.

“Do you need a lift home?” Connor asks, rather abruptly over the roof of the car, and Evan shakes his head in reply. His nerves feel too shot from the afternoon and the drive that had followed to try and force words from his stuttering tongue. Connor bobs his head in response and then they’re both just standing there, and neither of them really seem to know what to say.

Seconds pass and then Connor seems to find himself a little.

“Ugh, well, see you around,” he says, a frown on his brow, and Evan nods in responce and he turns to head towards his house. Evan was a little surprised when they arrived back here; he didn’t think Connor would want to return so soon afterwards, return to his shitty family and his shitty life, but for some reason he had. Maybe he just wanted his bed, if he does it’s a feeling Evan knows all too well.

For a moment, Evan watches him go, and then a thought flits into his brain, and it explaining it suddenly seems much more important than the anxious cat that’s got his tongue.

“Um, Connor,” he starts, and then waits for Connor to turn back. He looks a little cautious, as though he can already hear the weight in Evan’s nervous tone. “When I wrote about- about understanding you and you understanding me I wasn’t- I wasn’t trying to say I knew how you felt. Or make you out as a crazy person. I more meant like, I knew you’d- um, that you’d-”

“That I’d tried before too,” Connor interrupts his stuttering, “and you thought maybe we’d connect because of it and because we both have shitty fathers and shitty lives and shitty times at high school and we’d be friends and it’d all be magically better.”

Evan frowns at his feet because although what Connor has said is true, it’s the motivation behind what he had written in a nutshell, it sounds kind of silly put like that. He kind of expects Connor to laugh, but he doesn’t. For a second, he just looks at him, his expression unreadable, and then he sighs.

“You don’t want me as a friend,” he says, his expression weary, and before Evan has time to reply he’s turned on his heel and headed inside leaving Evan baffled and hurting and so, so confused on the driveway.

For a few seconds, he stands before the house, thoughts in turmoil and body thrumming with pent up anxiety, before he thinks he sees a curtain at an upstairs window flicker and that sends him bolting from the drive.

Evan walks all the way home from Connor’s house despite already being physically shaking with exhaustion because he really, really is not up to facing getting the bus right now. The bus is difficult at the best of times, it’s either so busy he can’t hear himself think, so crowded with people to stare and judge and not notice him simultaneously, or empty, and that’s better but then he has to signal for it to stop so he can get on and then signal again to get off, and he hates hates hates doing that because not only does that draw attention to him, it makes the bus stop just for him and he’s such an inconvenience already without holding up peoples day’s further.

There’s a $20 bill on the counter to greet him when he makes it home, and Evan briefly considers hiding it, putting it in his wallet and leaving the $8.01 in its place that would be the change for a medium ham and pineapple pizza just so that his mom won’t come home to the disappointment of having a mess of a son who can’t even order dinner for himself when she’s at work, but in the end, he doesn’t, because going up and down and then up the stairs again just to lie to his mother doesn’t seem worth the effort. 

He goes to bed instead, and in the golden light of the setting sun that filters through his curtains he lays there, spine tense and stomach knotted and eyes damp and with his eddying, anxious mind much, much too worked up, much to noisy to sleep.


	8. Sweet Popcorn

Evan wakes on Tuesday morning with a certainty the day that follows is not going to be a good day at all. His chest is already much too tight, his breath stolen by anxiety before he even woke, and he just wants to curl up under his duvet and hide from the world before he’s really even considered what the day might bring.

It isn’t uncommon for him to wake with a heart already heavy when things aren’t good, and things could definitely be classified as not good at the moment, but part of it he knows is due to the dream he had been thrown from by whatever it was that woke him.

He’d been driving in the dream. Or, no, not driving exactly, because he hadn’t been going anywhere before he’d found himself trying to parallel park between a shiny dark coupe and an equally shiny red SUV. Parking had been going okay for him, until it hadn’t, because on his way into what was an undeniably massive gap, he had clipped the back corner of the red SUV with his front bumper. Or His mom’s bumper really, he realised belatedly, because it was likely her car he was driving since they didn’t have the money for him to have his own even if he would consider driving anywhere.

Apparently, his dream self does drive though, because in the dream, Evan had been driving and then he had crashed, and he can’t even remember where his dream self was planning on going from his parked car or why he was driving it. He can just remember the sense of sheer heart stopping panic when the cars had hit, and the feeling of utter failure as he’d suddenly been stood beside the two. The owner of the second had been beside him, a pad and pencil in his hands as he took down insurance details to get the tiny, tiny scratch fixed and went on and on and on about how awful Evan was as a driver, how much of a burden he is to his mother who is going to have to pay the excess and cover the increase in premium his bump has caused.

It couldn’t be classified as a nightmare. Hell, it could barely even be called a bad dream, not really, not compared to ones Evan’s had before and not compared to ones he knows he could have had considering recent events either, and what had actually happened in it had been so dull that it’s really quite ridiculous that he’s woken in such a state over it.

He is a state though, he accepts that as he sits in his bed with his disgustingly sweaty back pressed up against the wood of his headboard and his clammy, twitchy hands clenched into shaking fists and a sinking feeling of dread and failure in his gut. There’s a tightness in his chest, too, one that hinders his too rapid, wheezy breathing and only worsens when he remembers the evening before, and the time he had spent in the forest with Connor, and his pills, and his need for help that Evan can neither source nor provide. He lets out a choked cough of a sob when he remembers school exists and his letter is still missing and feels the ever-present throbbing in his broken left arm and remembers what that means too.

He swallows the wave of nausea and reaches across to his bedside table and find the medicine bottles stored in his small wooden chest in hope that taking his morning Xanax will at least relive the physical symptoms of the broken mess that has become his brain just a little.

It’s early too, Evan realises when his eyes find the clock on the table beside the chest, not like 3 am awake in the middle of the night early, but 5:32 in the morning. He frowns at it for a moment, not quite sure if he’s relieved or not that it’s kind of too late to try to go back to sleep even if he thought his rattled brain would be capable of finding enough peace for him to do so. On one hand it’s less time for him to lay awake in his bed, alone with his thoughts until morning but on the other, well, that means it’s closer to a day Evan really doubts he’s capable of getting through. 

He sighs wetly, heart heavy and hopeless, and then takes a Xanax and a painkiller and then sits there in his bed, unsure of what to do as he waits until morning. There’s schoolwork to do, he knows, but he knows he isn’t capable of that right now, and he’s too wound up to read and too physically exhausted to even consider climbing from his bed to find his laptop or something else to numb his thoughts and occupy his brain.

Eventually, he starts an episode of the Great British Bake Off playing on his phone, and then lays there on his side with his eyes on the tiny, pixilated screen but his thoughts on their Netflix account, which they need to remember to cancel before Heidi gets charged, and the forest which he’s always loved but now just brings dread to his heart and nausea to his stomach. He thinks about falling and hospital bills and little white and blue capsules and the enigma that is Connor and how he so deserves help Evan doesn’t know he can provide. He considers the fragility of life and the bones in the human wrist, and contemplates whether you can regret falling if it wasn’t your fault because a branch broke and, or if he should really hate himself for failing because everything would be so much better for everyone else if he had just bled a little quicker or landed a little harder, and by the time the alarm on his phone rings and it’s time to get up, Evan knows he isn’t ready for the day ahead neither mentally nor physically.

He doesn’t want to get up and get dressed, and he doesn’t want to see his mom and the concern and sadness in her eyes, and he doesn’t want to school and see Jared and Alana and Zoe, and he doesn’t want to continue pretending everything is okay when it isn’t.

But he does get up, and he does get dressed, and he shaves and brushes his teeth and puts in his contact lenses and combes his hair because he must. Because the world moves on whether he’s millimetres from a breakdown or not.

He considers skipping breakfast, considers laying on his bed and pretending he doesn’t exist until his mom comes to find him and tells him it’s time to leave for school, but he doesn’t think he can handle the concern he knows he will see in her sad, blue eyes if he does just that, so he heads downstairs instead, and fixes himself a bowl of cereal and a glass of juice and picks at both until the juice is gone and the cereal is soggy. He picks at his cast too, a new anxious tic he desperately needs to stop because his bitten, bloody nails are slowly beginning to damage the fiberglass. It’s starting to peal near his thumb where he abuses it the most and there’s now a piece of sharp, meshy fabric coming away from the rest of the cast.

It’s slowly unravelling, just like he is.

Heidi arrives downstairs, her hair in a hurriedly formed ponytail and her expression flustered just as he’s pouring the remains of his breakfast down the sink and she says, “Oh, I didn’t realise you were up,” by way of greeting, and then frowns when she realises what it is he’s doing with his bowl. At least she doesn’t complain.

“I have to be in early today,” she says instead, eyes guilty and concerned, “I can take you in now if you’re ready to go or-”

“It’s fine, I’ll walk,” Evan interrupts, “It’s- I can walk.”

Heidi frowns at him, disagreement on her brow.

“It’s a long way? You could get the bus,” she suggests, and Evan sighs because it’s a walk he has walked many, many times before and she knows he has, but she’s still fussing, still worrying, and that’s … really not what Evan needs right now.

He knows she’s just concerned, but his shoulders still tighten with irritation.

“_Mom_! Stop it, I’m fine,” he snaps, and despite his tone, he’s actually more annoyed at himself than her, at the concern and worry he puts upon her because he’s useless and a failure and a burden.

Heidi holds up her hands in mock surrender as her expression falls a little more, her eyebrows furrowing. “Okay, okay. It’s just-” She breaks off when her gaze falls upon the glowing blue numbers of the clock on the oven. Her eyes widen almost comically.

“Shit, I’m going to be late. Can you grab lunch from the canteen at school today? There’s still $20 on the counter, you can use that.”

There’s a frown on her lips and irritation in her eyes as she darts past him to grab her jacket from the back of a chair and snatch an apple from the bowl beside the sink.

“Oh, and it can cover pizza for dinner too because I’m going straight from work to school. I’ll be back at about nine or so.”

Evan nods in agreement as she rushes back past him towards the door, her hip knocking into a chair as she passes. It screeches on the floor and then knocks into the table, the collision tilting it enough that although it doesn’t fall, the stack of papers piled in the seat slide to the floor and scatter themselves over the faded lino like the leaves of trees caught in a particularly flustered tornado.

Heidi turns back at the crash, briefly surveys the chaos she’s leaving behind and her teenage son who’s standing in the middle of it half bent down and with hands outstretched towards the mess, and then shakes her head.

“Just leave it, I’ll sort it later,” she commands tiredly, flipping a hand dismissively as she turns away again. For a second, Evan thinks that might be all she is going to say to him before she leaves, but then she pauses in the doorway and turns back. She hangs there for a second, one hand on the frame and her tired, blue eyes on her son, and then sighs softly.

“Please get dinner, Evan,” she begs, her voice is a little desperate. “You need to eat,” and Evan nods even though he has no idea whether he’ll be in the mood for dinner or not later. Whether his anxiety will allow him to answer the door to exchange money for a pizza he isn’t sure his churning stomach will be able to digest.

Heidi smiles stiffly at his nod though, expression lifting a little as though maybe she wants him to believe she has believed his lie. “Good. Okay. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Yeah, see you later,” Evan murmurs, and then, with one last forced smile, she’s gone, and he is alone in the house once again.

After picking up the bills and letters and hurriedly scribbled notes that had littered the kitchen floor, Evan walks to school, and by the time he gets there, he’s already exhausted and melting and ready for the day to be over. Well, he was ready for the day to be over since before it even started, so now he’s more than ready, he’d guess.

He doesn’t see Connor or Jared as he makes his way to his locker, skirting the walls with his eyes down and his cast against his stomach, and neither of them are in his homeroom when he gets there which does make sense really as Jared is usually late and Connor seems to skive more days than he attends. Alana is there, though, and she stands beside his desk prattling on about her evening spent at a sign language class at the church near her house. She shows him a few signs too, and he copies her actions because that’s what she wants, and by the time enough of the class has shown up that Mrs Fenton decides it’s time to take the register, he’s capable of signing hello, and saying what his name is, and asking someone for theirs. They’re not the best of signs, Alana had told him so, half because his clammy hands are already twitching in apprehension of seeing Jared and Connor and the rest of the day, and half because he can’t bend his throbbing left wrist or most of his hand or part of his thumb.

Evan thinks he would probably find the cast annoying if he didn’t have other, more serious things on his mind right now.

Jared arrives half way through the register as usual, and Mrs Fenton sighs and goes back up the list to tick him off as she always does, and then there are announcements, something about a geography field trip and the time and date of auditions for the school play and an update on a new recycling scheme in the cafeteria, and then the class is dismissed except-

“Evan, can you stay behind a minute?” Mrs Fenton requests softly as he passes the desk and Evan’s eyes dart up from the floor. He clenches his suddenly sweaty hands into fists, fights the urge to run from his teacher and the curious, judgemental eyes of his classmates. “Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” she assures him, giving him a smile.

He nods, because what else can he do, and stands beside her desk with his eyes to the floor and his clammy fingers picking at the button of his khakis through the grey polo he’d put on that morning, as he waits for the room to empty. Jarred gives him a look as he passes. It’s curious, maybe a little concerned. For once, there’s no teasing glint in his eye.

When the room is empty, Mrs Fenton goes to her desk, and from the top draw she retrieves a white plastic medicine bottle. Evan’s heart clenches nauseatingly because, for the briefest of moments, he thinks it might be Connor’s one, or no, not Connor’s, Mrs C. Murphy’s, but then logic catches up with his anxious brain and he realises it must be his, the one he had left on the bathroom floor the previous afternoon.

“This was handed into reception yesterday afternoon,” Mrs Fenton explains. “It was found in the bathroom next to the chemistry labs.”

Evan accepts the bottle as it’s passed to him, turns it until he finds his own name and address on the label even though he knows what it says just because he needs to confirm it is his and not inexplicably one filled with blue and white capsules instead of his blue round tablets.

The bottle isn’t filled with anything though, he realises belatedly. The pills that should be inside are missing.

The pills that were inside the bottle from last night are missing too, tipped into a river and carried downstream, away from both himself and Connor because deep in his heart, Evan knew neither of them could be trusted.

“It’s empty?” he chokes, and he might have interrupted Mrs Fenton asking him to confirm they are his even though it says his name on the side.

Mrs Fenton doesn’t reply for a second.

“We can’t give the medicine back, school policy,” she says, a note of apology in her tone, before she sighs. “Evan, how did they end up on the bathroom floor?”

“Oh, I- um, I-” It only takes a moment for the lie to form on his tongue, but Evan’s aware that’s a moment of him standing there with his mouth open and eyes wide. “I must have- they must have fallen out of my bag or- or something.”

Mrs Fenton doesn’t look entirely convinced, which, well, Evan can hardly blame her. It was a lie, and a shitily told lie at that.

“No one else could have had them and left them there, could they?” she asks, and Evan’s still trying to work out quite what she means by that when she continues. “You didn’t lend them to anyone? Or have them taken from your backpack or locker?”

His eyes dart up.

“No, no, I- no one else had them. I wouldn’t- I really- um, I really just … dropped them. I think they- they probably fell out of my bag when I was getting my hoodie out. It was- I was cold.”

The frown on Mrs Fenton’s lips stays put, but after a moment, she nods slowly. “Okay, that’s good.”

Relief lightens a little of the lead in Evan’s gut because at least she now sounds like she at believes at least some of his explanation.

“Well, not good but-” she breaks off and sighs. “Evan, do you know you’re not meant to bring your own medicine to school without the school being aware?”

She waits for him to nod. It’s a small sharp, guilty bob of his head with his eyes fixed on his restless hands because Evan does know that, and his mom knows that too, but she’d been too busy with work and class to sort it out properly when he’d first been prescribed them. She’d apparently forgotten about it soon afterwards because she’d never brought it up again, and although Evan hadn’t, he hadn’t really wanted the fact he needed them to function put on his school record, so he’d made the decision to let it slide.

He kind of wishes he hadn’t now.

He doesn’t want to be in trouble, and he doesn’t want his mom to be in trouble either.

Mrs Fenton is talking again, explaining how he can register his medicine with the school, Evan thinks, telling him how it’s not just for the safety of other students but also so he doesn’t get in trouble if he’s found with them, but Evan isn’t really listening. His mind is reeling too much for him to concentrate and his heart is throbbing much too loudly in his ears for him to hear her.

It’s a change in Mrs Fenton’s voice that pulls him back from his worries.

A softening.

“But, Evan,” she says gently, and then pauses, waits for him to look up. “I am aware what these are for,” she says, gently, “and if you feel you need them during the school day, I don’t think it would be productive of me to stop you from having them, so as long as you make sure your parents contact the school as soon as possible, I’m not going to stop you bringing them in the meantime. Does that sound fair?”

Evan nods in answer to the question, thoughts back in the room and eyes to the floor.

“What’s more important though, Evan,” she starts, and although she still sounds kind, there’s a new firmness to her tone, “is that you need to make sure you do not, under any circumstances, leave medication where it could fall into the hands of other students again.”

Evan swallows. His clammy, shaking, hands are clenched into fists tight enough his stubby nails dig into his palm and his broken wrist aches and his shoulders are tense and raised, his posture defensive under Mrs Fenton’s soft gaze because although he isn’t being told off, he’s been told so, it feels like just that, feels like he’s a failure and a disappointment.

“I, um- I’m sorry, I won’t- I won’t let it happen again.”

Mrs Fenton nods. “Good. Make sure you don’t. I’m sure you understand that these could be very dangerous if misused.”

“I- I know, I’m sorry,” Evan finds himself choking in agreement, and he does understand, not only because he’d been told so by his doctor when he’d first been prescribed them, but also because he’s looked into taking too many before. He also knows he never has enough to do an awful lot of damage and that it takes a significantly higher dosage of Xanax than he keeps in the small white medicine bottle he takes to school to overdose, but he certainly understands that they could still be dangerous to anyone who finds them. He does know he shouldn’t have left them on the floor of the toilets but at the time, they were not a priority. There were tablets far more capable, and far more likely, of causing harm.

They didn’t cause harm though. Connor chose not to use them for that purpose at the time, and now he can’t. Evan saw to that.

Not that there aren’t other ways, his mind reminds him darkly.

“Do you always keep them in your backpack?”

Evan starts from his thoughts. Swallows. Forces his distracted, reeling mind to comprehend what has been said. Eventually, a sharp nod bobs his head in answer to the question.

“Could your locker be a safer place for them? Or perhaps you could bring a smaller supply of them to school?”

Evan nods again, not trusting his voice not to break if he tries to talk because everything is a mess. His heart throbs inside his too tight chest. It almost hurts.

It does hurt.

It hurts that he doesn’t know where Connor is too.

“Okay, I’m glad you agree,” Mrs Fenton says, and then there’s a pause before she sighs. Evan sneaks a glance up through his lashes to find her expression folded into a frown that he doesn’t quite understand. It doesn’t look angry, though. Confused, maybe. A little concerned.

It’s the same look his mom tends to wear when he’s done something new for her to worry over and a wave of fear joins the sea of anxiety that resides in his stomach.

“Actually, Evan,” she starts, tone suddenly softer, “since you’re here, I’d just like to ask how you’re doing.”

Evan’s heartrate throbs a little louder in his ears. 

“How I’m doing?” he asks, voice sounding chocked and wheezy even to himself, as he tries to figure out what he has done to make her say just that. He’s a mess, sure, but he’s always a mess and has been even since he was old enough to feel self-conscious, and he wonders if somehow what his mom told the school about his summer has got through to her of if he just seems more of a wreck than usual.

A nod. “Yes, as I’m sure you’re aware your mom made the school aware you’d had quite a serious accident over the summer,” she says with a frown.

His stomach clenches nauseatingly at ‘accident’ and Evan hopes to God his expression does nothing so revealing. Not that it would matter if it had, he realises moments later, because Mrs Fenton’s eyes have dipped from his face to the cast held against his stomach. He self-consciously forces his agitated fingers to stop shredding fibreglass once again and schools his face back to something he hopes looks more neutral and less like she’s just thrown a dart at the board of reasons why he’s a broken mess and hit the bullseye.

At least the fact that she knows about his fall might explain a little of her concerned expression. Maybe she hasn’t actually noticed how much more of a mess he is than usual.

He hopes she hasn’t.

“Oh, no, I’m- um, I’m fine,” Evan tells her with as much confidence as he can muster. His eyes are again averted, and his agitated fingers have at some point moved to ruining the hem of his worn polo. Its better than his cast at least.

“Okay,” she says, and he can tell from her tone and her frown she isn’t all that convinced. “And everything is going okay at school?”

“Yeah, for- for sure.”

Mrs Fenton nods once, expression conflicted, and for a moment, Evan is certain she is about call him out on his lie. On his lies. Plural.

She doesn’t though.

He’s saved by the bell, quite literally, as it abruptly rings to signal the start of first period. He startles violently and doesn’t quite miss the look of concern that flickers across Mrs Fenton’s face.

Evan swallows, focuses his thoughts.

“I have English,” he says before she can start again. 

For a good few seconds afterwards, she says nothing, her expression conflicted and then, just when Evan thinks she might just be about to make him stay instead and talk about feelings and anxiety and possibly his fall from the tallest oak in Ellison state park, she nods.

“I’ll write you a hall pass.”

Evan waits as she writes, his heart hammering and fingers twitching and anxiety bad enough he would definitely take a Xanax if he had any, until she passes him the newly signed slip of pale pink paper.

He counts that as a dismissal and with his medicine bottle in one hand and his hall pass in the other, turns away and darts towards the exit.

Despite wanting nothing more than to go to the bathroom where he could hide and attempt to fix his stuttering breathing and thrumming heart and mourn the loss of his Xanax in relative peace, Evan doesn’t. Instead, he heads to English because he can’t skip the lesson and face the concern he thinks will come if he does or the stares and questions, he knows he’ll get if he turns up later than he already will. Once there, he settles in his seat at the edge of the room and spends the first 10 minutes trying to supress the panic churning in his stomach, and the remaining 50 minutes of the lesson worrying about Connor because he very clearly hasn’t turned up today, and although Evan thinks, hopes, he’s skiving there’s still that niggling voice in his head that’s telling him he isn’t. That something else has happened.

The worry and concern and anxiety and the dread heavy in his stomach hang around until lunch time when Zoe Murphy, her expression a warm smile Evan assumes she wouldn’t be pulling if her brother had done something truly stupid, appears rather suddenly before him and calls his name. He startles violently at her words, pen skittering across the glossy pages of the math homework he’s having another futile attempt at completing before the lesson that afternoon, and his head darts up fast enough he isn’t entirely sure he hasn’t given himself whiplash.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Zoe apologises, a soft frown growing where her smile just was.

“No, no, it’s um- it’s fine,” Evan finds himself saying, frowning a little himself both because his heart is still racing unpleasantly and because Zoe isn’t laughing. Not that she should be, Evan knows, but most people do. It’s funny how easily he jumps, he gets that, but that doesn’t mean he likes them doing it all the same.

Zoe nods, her expression curious, then, rather unexpectedly, fixes her smile and asks if she can sit beside him.

Evan hopes his eyes don’t go as comically wide as they feel.

“Oh, I, um, for sure,” he stutters in reply as simultaneously clears his books and tries to work out how he’s going to hide the name scrawled boldly across the side of his uncovered cast without further drawing her attention to it for however long it is she’s going to tolerate sitting with him.

He isn’t entirely sure why he wants to hide it, maybe to avoid her questions, maybe because it feels much more private that a name scrawled across a cast in size 500 font should, but either way, it is something he doesn’t really want her to see.

The cast ends up by his side, pressed against his body at an angle he hopes hides the large, black lettering, and although Evan is well aware it isn’t the best of hiding places, he also knows it’s as good as it’s going to get. He’d put the hoodie back on if he could, but it’s boiling outside even in the shade and Zoe would wonder about it for sure.

He’s also not entirely sure he wouldn’t pass out from heat stroke if he did; he’s hot enough already that his back is damp against the tree trunk and his fringe is stuck to his clammy forehead and his brain is beginning to feel a bit too big inside his skull.

“Great!” Zoe smiles brightly, seemingly oblivious to his struggling, and settles down beside him close enough that the knee of her folded legs and his own almost touch. She unzips her bag and takes out a lunch box.

Evan blinks at it.

“So, how was your summer?”

Evan blinks at her too, wondering why on earth Zoe Murphy is sat beside him under a tree rather than in the canteen with her friends from class or the couple of kids from her year who play in the Jazz Band too. Evan can’t quite remember what they play but he doesn’t think that’s at all important right now.

Zoe is though, and the question of why she is sitting beside him, and Connor, too, who is still missing and a danger to himself and that’s something Evan could probably bring up with Zoe because maybe she could get him some help or tell their parents, who definitely could. He can’t do that though, he knows he can’t, and his stomach tightens at the knowledge.

“Why are you here?” he asks instead of telling her about his shitty, shitty summer, and it comes out a little more abrupt than he meant it too but he’s stressed and anxious enough already without the added pressure of trying to work out both what she wants from him, because that’s the only reason she’d speak to him, he thinks, and also what on earth to say because he’s a wreck at social interactions even at the best of times and this really, really isn’t one of those times.

Zoe shrugs lightly and takes a sandwich from her box. “You looked like you could use some company and I needed somewhere shady to eat my lunch.”

She smiles again and Evan nods despite not being quite sure how truthful her words are. He wonders if she knows what happened in the forest, if Connor has let something slip or maybe if he’s just told Zoe outright, if maybe she’s come to ask him for information he doesn’t want to tell. Maybe he’s being paranoid though; his anxiety does that, sometimes.

“You normally have canteen food?” he says, the words lilting like a question, and a fraction of a second passes before the rest of his brain catches up with the distrustful, anxious part that’s pretty solidly in charge at the moment. He feels his cheeks flushing. “Oh, um, that sounds a bit creepy actually.”

Zoe laughs kindly. It sounds like bells. “It’s too hot for hot food,” she argues lightly.

“There’s air conditioning inside, though.”

Evan kicks himself mentally.

Zoe casts him a look he can’t quite read. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Oh, no, no, of course not,” he protests, cheeks burning and eyes to the floor. He picks at the hem of his shirt with restless, anxious fingers, unsure and stressed and almost wishing Zoe Murphy wasn’t sitting with him beneath a tree in a way he never thought he would. He likes her, he has for years, and she’s bright and warm and kind, even to him, and although he’d normally give anything for a chance to talk to her alone, he really, really isn’t in the mood for social interaction, especially when he can’t quite be sure she isn’t there for another reason than just to chat.

Especially when his mind is focused front and foremost on her brother.

“So, where’s your lunch?” Zoe asks sounding genuinely curious and a little concerned in a way that reminds him of his mom. She shouldn’t be worried for him though, he doesn’t need more people worrying over him and he doesn’t want more people worrying over him either. He doesn’t deserve it.

“Oh, I um, I ate it already.”

Zoe raises an eyebrow. “You’re a shitty liar.”

Evan swallows; that isn’t exactly the first time a murphy sibling has said that to him. Hell, it isn’t even the second.

Zoe hums thoughtfully and then reaches inside her bag and retrieves a bright pink packet of what looks to contain some fancy sort of chips.

“Here.” She holds it out, offering him whatever is inside, and then, apparently sensing his uncertainty adds, “It’s popcorn.”

Evan nods, although that isn’t really why he had deliberated her offering. “Don’t you want them?”

Her expression lifts, her smile growing in understanding this time, and she dips her hand inside her backpack to retrieve a second identical packet. “I didn’t eat yesterdays,” she explains, and then puts them back inside the bag. She gives the first packet a shake in his direction.

“Oh, I- thanks,” Evan mutters and then reaches over to accept the popcorn she’s insisting on donating to him. He holds the packet, pretending to read as he tries to work out how to open it, and then, after a moment of deliberation, anxiety and nausea fighting his empty, angry stomach, lifts his casted arm from beside his thigh. The angle is wrong for her to see the writing, he thinks.

He hopes.

The packet opens after a brief struggle and he tries not to wince at the twinge of his fractured arm as the seal suddenly gives way.

He must have failed as Zoe swears lightly from beside him.

“Oh, shit, sorry, I should probably have offered.”

Evan glances up to find her expression as apologetic as her words. He flushes. “No, no, it’s, um, I’m fine.”

The popcorn is sweet and salty flavour he finds when he tries it, half out of hunger and half out of needing something to do, and really very nice. He’d consider asking his mom to get some if he thought it would be even vaguely possible on their small grocery budget. “Thank you. For the popcorn.”

“You’re welcome.” Zoe nods, and smiles. “So, how’d you break your arm?”

Evan swallows suddenly cloggy popcorn down a too small throat. It almost hurts. “Oh, I- I um, I fell, out of a tree. It’s pretty sad, I know.” He forces a laugh.

Zoe doesn’t. “That’s not sad at all.” She takes a bite of her sandwich then asks, “Why were you up a tree?”

“I like trees. Like, not really like but, um-” He pauses and takes a breath, holds it as he tries to force his eddying thoughts into some sort of order, then exhales. “I worked this summer as an apprentice park ranger at Ellison state park and there was this tree, it was beautiful, the tallest oak in the park, and I used to sit in it to eat my lunch. It was peaceful, you know? Anyway, one day the branch it um- it snapped, and I- I fell.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Zoe consoles softly, and it sounds sympathetic but there’s something else in her tone that Evan can’t quite place.

“It’s um, it’s okay.”

“Were you okay? Other than your arm?” she asks, eyes sad and concerned and a little curious as she tries to subtly look him up and down. Her gaze lingers on the still pink scar on his forehead.

Evan’s eyes return to the popcorn packet he’s clenching in his fist with more force than is strictly necessary. “Oh, um, not- not really.” 

“Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Zoe apologises, apparently sensing his unease. Her words sound sincere, too, and Evan wonders if it’s that alone that gives him the courage to continue.

“No, it’s- it’s okay.” He tries to smile as though it is. “I wasn’t okay though, I guess. Like, I am now but, um, it was kind of not great, for a while. The doctors told mom not to go home the first night, just- um, just in case.”

“Shit.” Zoe’s eyebrows wander towards her hairline. “That sounds serious.”

“It was, kind of, I guess.” There’s a brief pause and then, when Zoe looks to have found something else to ask, Evan speaks instead, his plan on asking for a topic of conversation other than his semi-self-caused near death experience. “Can we-” he starts at the same time Zoe says, “Can I-”

They both break off.

“You go,” Zoe says, and Evan shakes his head.

“I wasn’t really-, um, you go.”

Zoe gives him a smile. It’s kind, he thinks, and his heart would probably be singing if it was franticly worrying about her brother, conflicting with itself over whether to tell of what happened with Connor or not. It also longs to check with her if he’s okay, like he probably is, given her smile and the fact she’s still at school and spending her lunch break with him beneath a tree but he could do with reassurance.

He can’t just ask though, he can’t, besides-

“I was going to ask if I could sign your cast.”

Evan’s eyes flash up to meet Zoe’s blue before they find the floor again because that really isn’t what Evan had expected her to say. Well, he isn’t sure what he’d expected her to say, but his isn’t prepared for that at all. He clamps the cast to his side again taking the packet of popcorn with it and tries to work out how to tell her no without explicitly saying no because that would just be weird. “Oh, I- um, I haven’t got a pen, and well, I’m getting it off soon so there’s not much, um, not much point.”

Zoe’s calculating gaze is fixed on him with enough intensity he doesn’t even need to look to know it’s there. She stares at him as he stares at the grass and his anxious, sweaty fingers ruin the hem of his grey polo, and then, just when he thinks she’s about to call him out on his lie and ask about her brother’s name written in bold, black lettering, she nods.

“Okay,” she says with a shrug, the word drawn out and heavier than it should be, and then takes another bite of her sandwich. Evan knows he should probably finish the popcorn. 

“Were you doing your math homework before I came?

He frowns at the unexpected question, blinks, encourages his rattled brain into functioning again.

“Oh, um, yeah, but it wasn’t- um, I wasn’t really getting anywhere with it so you’re not, um, interrupting or- or, anything.”

Zoe nods like he’s making sense and not just uttered a stuttered wreck of a sentence. “Is math not your thing?”

Evan shrugs. “It’s normally okay.”

“But not at the moment?”

He shrugs again, not quite sure how to explain he’d been too busy spiralling and trying not to have a mid-class panic attack to pay attention to the lesson and that his brain isn’t really working at full speed at the moment anyway because he’s an overtired, anxious wreck of a person who’s still recovering from a concussion and internal bleeding severe enough that they had very nearly lost their life.

Zoe doesn’t seem to need the explanation though, she’s kind and patient and after a moment of consideration she smiles and says, “I could help? Like, I’m not great at maths and not in your year, but it sometimes helps me if I have someone to talk stuff through with?”

“Oh, um, you don’t have to,” Evan mutters as he wonders if he’s imagining the weight to the words a conversation on maths homework doesn’t deserve. 

“I know.” Zoe shrugs lightly then reaches for his books with the hand not holding the sandwich. “Which page were you on?”

Evan would consider declining again simply because this can’t be how she wants to spend her lunch, but he is in need of help, and he does need the homework done, so instead he swallows his protest and tells her the page number and pulls his exercise book back onto his knees.

During lunch, Evan actually manages to get a good three quarters of his math homework answered with Zoe’s assistance simply because, as she had promised, talking through the methods had helped. He isn’t all that sure Zoe was actually following what he was saying, but she hadn’t mentioned it or complained, and she hadn’t left when Evan had told her again that she didn’t need to stay if she didn’t want to.

The math lesson itself turns out to be bearable, and so does the history lesson that follows.

Concentrating is still not an easy task, Evan finds, his mind is still too busy fretting and spiralling to be truly focused on learning the methods of solving quadratic equations and the important dates of some sort of war, but his heart is somehow a fraction lighter and he manages to stay aware enough to copy down from the board what he’s meant to and record the questions he’s to answer for homework in his school diary. He’s aware enough of what is going on in the classroom to notice that Jared is again sitting across the room, carefully avoiding eye contact, and Evan still doesn’t understand that because he can’t work out what on earth he’s done to upset his family friend without speaking to him.

It hurts, but he’s kind of used to pain by now.

The walk home is long and tiring and by the time he’s unlocked the door and let himself into the silent, vacant, house, Evan wants nothing more than to curl up in bed and sleep until morning. It hasn’t been a bad day, per se, not compared to recent days at least, but it’s been a long day, and he’s hot and shaky and hurting and emotionally exhausted.

It’s exhausting worrying all the time.

The knot of guilt in his stomach tightens a little more, because Evan knows he causes his mom to do exactly that.

No wonder she always looks so tired.

Evan doesn’t curl up in bed and sleep when he gets up to his room though, both because he has homework to do and dinner to eat and Connor to worry over, and because his sleep is so restless, so plagued with dreams that it isn’t really a blissful escape into unconsciousness anymore.

It's too early for dinner, so he fixes himself a coffee and then takes it to his room and sips at the too warm liquid as he stares at the chipped and mottled surface of his desk. It had probably been a decent piece of furniture at one point, he thinks as he drinks, solid wood and nicely made, but now years past its prime. The wood was ruined and the varnish pealing years before his mom had brought it home for him from a garage sale down the road. Evan doesn’t mind though, it’s nice, in a way, familiar, he guesses.

The coffee leaves him with a scolded tongue and a thrumming heart but a little more awake than before. His hands are twitchier than normal as he retrieves text books and exercise books and his tatty, plain black pencil case from his backpack, an unfortunate side effect of the caffeine he needs but knows he shouldn’t really drink.

It helps though, a little, and he manages to make an attempt at his math homework and read the questions in his history book and skim the first few pages of the text they’re meant to be reading for English before he gives up trying to focus his rattled, eddying brain on schoolwork and his tired eyes on the paper. He’s much too busy worrying about the Connor problem, which despite Zoe’s smile is definitely still a problem, and the enigma that is what he’s done to upset Jared to really concentrate, and the stress of being unable to concentrate and unable to get the work done he needs to do isn’t really helping.

Cooking dinner ends up being a much more successful task than doing homework, and the scrambled eggs on toast Evan prepares are actually rather nice even to his burnt tongue. He isn’t a bad cook, he’s actually pretty decent when he tries and Heidi is too, but cooking is rare in the Hansen household all the same.

It didn’t used to be. Back before Heidi had to work so much at weekends and before her evenings were filled with class, they used to cook together in the kitchen on a fairly regular basis. Or more Heidi would cook whilst a younger, happier Evan tried to help but rather hindered, or completed homework or prattled on about his day or joined in as she sang along to the staticky radio that lived on the windowsill. 

Evan isn’t sure he can remember the last time he helped his mom in the kitchen. Not whilst she was in there too, anyway.

He showers after dinner, and after putting on his pyjamas and unwrapping the clingfilm from his cast, he considers writing one of those pep talk letters he should have been writing but hasn’t. He doesn’t though, he hasn’t the energy to search for positivity at the moment, and after spending the few minutes that follow fretting over the loss of his letter three days before, he decides to have another attempt at his homework instead.

By the time a reasonable time has arrived for him to try and sleep but instead lay awake in bed and consider life and death and trees and small white and blue pills, he’s managed to fudge solutions to couple more math questions and shakily write down answers to the first three question of his history homework and title and date the page. He’s made it to the end of the chapter in his English book too, but despite his scanning across each line of text on each page, he has no more of an idea of what happened than before he read it.

It hasn’t been the most productive of evenings, or the best of days, Evan thinks as leans back in his chair and rubs a clammy hand over his aching brow, it’s not a day he could write in a letter and show to Dr Sherman, not by a long stretch, but it’s an improvement over the day before, at least.


	9. Salty Tears

Evan startles awake from a restless, dream filled night to the trill of his alarm, an empty house, and a note in the kitchen from his mom on Friday morning.

As he sits alone at the table, exhausted and anxious and shivering in the chilly room with a mug of tea warming his restless hands, he considers giving up on the day there and then. It isn’t as though his mom is there to care if he goes back to bed rather than to school, and even if his school notified her of his absence, he knows she wouldn’t doubt him if he told her he was ill, but he doesn’t want to worry her any more than he already has.

There’s also the matter of the stubborn, determined part of his brain that demands he keep pretending he is okay because, maybe, if he does, then he will be.

He knows mental health doesn’t exactly work like that, but he can always hope.

After finishing his tea, Evan pockets bill on the counter and packs his bag and then hauls himself to school. 

The tea sloshes nauseatingly in his stomach as he walks.

Or maybe that’s just anxiety.

He isn’t sure.

Unlike the day before, Evan arrives at homeroom to find Connor is already there. Well, he’s there physically, at least, mentally, maybe not so much, as he’s slumped in his chair with his eyes on his desk and his mattered hair hanging forwards around his face like a shield. He doesn’t seem to be giving a single thought to the room around him, but at least he has physically made it in.

At least he’s still alive, the dark part of Evan’s brain oh so helpfully supplies. 

It’s kind of a surprise that Jared is already there too, that he’s at school on time for once and isn’t going to saunter in half way through like he usually does.

It’s less of a surprise that upon noticing that it’s Evan who has paused briefly beside his desk on the way to his own, Jared very purposefully turns away and starts a conversation with a boy called Freddie who does Electronics Club. 

It hurts enough that Evan doesn’t quite manage to keep the pain from his expression.

It hurts a little more when he realises his failure doesn’t really matter; no one pays him any attention to notice the crumpling of his features anyway.

Evan finds his own seat and then spends the rest of homeroom sat in silence save for a ‘here’ after his name is called.

The morning passes slowly and stressfully and by lunchtime, Evan’s exhausted both physically and emotionally and is really starting to regret his decision not to pretend he was ill that morning. His eyes itch and blur and his chest is tight with anxiety and there’s a distinctly unpleasant ache making itself at home in his temples. The violent tremors that started plaguing his hands midway through geography are more than a little annoying too. Holding paper still with his cast is enough of a fuss, so by the time he adds a shaking right hand to the mix, copying down the notes on ox-bow lakes from the board feels like it’s getting to be a lot more effort than it’s worth.

Despite the tension that grows in his spine and the tightness that clenches his chest at the thought of the crowded lunch hall, Evan follows his classmates there at the end of English in hope that food will give his energy levels a much needed boost and help quell the relentless tremors plaguing his clammy hands.

Eating only fuels the nausea still hanging in his gut, and the crowded room and the fact he’s sat along in the corner of it aren’t great for his failing mental health, but at least the sloppy mac and cheese he picks at helps him feel a little less like he’s going to pass out if he stands too fast.

He counts it as a success.

It doesn’t take Evan very long to notice that Connor is missing form their gym class that afternoon. He’s easy enough to spot if you’re looking out for him, and tall enough that he should be even if you’re not, and Evan finds himself almost obsessively keeping an eye out for Connor at the moment.

A part of him, the same part of him that laughs at the fact he’s still wearing a stolen hoodie, is very aware of how creepy that would sound if he were to ever say it out loud, but there’s also something very, very comforting about being able to see Connor with his own two eyes.

It isn’t possible for him to have done something irreversibly stupid if Evan can see he’s okay. 

Not that he can see he’s okay at the moment, though, because Connor has cut class.

Again.

Evan finds he can’t entirely blame Connor for cutting gym, it’s awful at the best of times and he thinks he would skip too if he had the guts, but he’d still rather Connor hadn’t skipped both because it isn’t good for his grades or attendance, and because Evan had kind of been enjoying the slight loosening of the anxiety in his gut that Connor’s presence had brought about.

It isn’t just because Evan’s pretty much constantly been keeping an eye out for Connor since their second meeting in the forest that he spots he’s missing from the crowd of navy-blue sports kit clad 17 year olds warming up in lines.

It helps that he’s sat on the bench at the side of the sports hall with a pretty good view of the whole lesson, too.

Their year is playing dodgeball today, and although dodgeball isn’t exactly Evans favourite of sports, he thinks he would much rather be participating than stuck on a bench. It turns out sitting on the side-lines, restless under the curious eyes of his classmates and the withering glares of the sports teacher is much worse than having balls being flung with force at his face.

Balls are much easier to dodge than glances, he decides as he picks anxiously at the cast bracing the broken wrist that he assumes they wrongly think is the reason for his lack of participation.

Well. The students probably think that.

Mr Marsden shouldn’t though, he’d read the letter Evan had handed to him from his doctor explaining why he isn’t allowed to participate in sports for the next month, but he is also the football coach, and usually makes his belief that unless you’re dead or are likely to be so within the timeframe of the lesson you should be participating very well known. Evan’s almost surprised that he hadn’t been forced to join in.

He isn’t sure he would have complained if he had, half because he isn’t up for any sort of confrontation at the best of times let alone disobeying the imposing 6 foot 4 hulk-shaped football coach, and half because at least then he wouldn’t be stuck on the bench like some sort of exhibit on failed tree climbing attempts.

On what you look like after failing at other attempts too.

Evan physically shakes the thought from his head and forces himself to stop picking at his cast.

He ends up picking at his nails and worrying about Connor again instead which he isn’t all that sure is an improvement.

The bell that signals the end of the sports lesson also signals the end of the week, and after his initial flinch, Evan finds himself relaxing just a little at its abrupt trill. It isn’t as though he has plans for the weekend, he rarely does, and with the mess his brain is in he isn’t all that sure how much sleep or homework he’s going to be able to catch up on, but he’s more than looking forwards to the additional strain of school being taken off his plate.

It isn’t until he’s half way across the parking lot that he realises that with the weekend and the lack of school come two full days where he’s not going to be entirely sure that Connor is okay.

The rest of the afternoon passes just as Evan had expected.

He walks home, too emotionally spent to take the bus, then all but collapses on the sofa when he gets there, too physically spent from the long day and the long walk to convince his tired legs to carry him up the stairs.

He half naps, half numbly stares at most of an episode of The Great British Baking Show on Netflix until he comes back to himself enough to start stressing about the fact he’s pretty sure his mom has cancelled their subscription yet, and then turns off the TV and heads to the kitchen to make a coffee.

The coffee helps a little, and between that and the good 45 minutes he spent slouched on to sofa, drifting somewhere between the realms of reality and sleep, he makes it up the stairs and to his desk where he spreads out his books and gets to work.

He kind of wishes his notes from class weren’t a scrawled, jumbled mess, but then, it was him that wrote them, and so he isn’t sure why they would be anything except a mess.

They were written by a mess, after all.

Evan eventually gives up on homework, frustrated and upset and achieving nothing anyway, then spends the next few minutes in the kitchen opening cupboards and drawers in search of something he fancies for dinner and finding nothing. He tops toast with scrambled eggs again in the end and eats them alone at the small battered table in the kitchen.

He flicks idlily through Instagram as he eats just for something to do.

The news feed of his Instagram isn’t all that interesting despite it having been a while since he’s been on there. It’s kind of his fault, he knows, since he doesn’t follow all that many people, just Jared and Alana and a couple of other classmates he’s known for years and spoken to a little before his anxiety worsened enough to leave him a stammering, stuttering, sweaty wreck. There are a couple of other accounts he follows too; nature ones, tree themed ones, one just filled with pictures of puppies and another by the owner of a dachshund which can balance a pretty impressive range of objects on its head.

He follows an account which just posts inspirational quotes, too, simply because Alana had sent him the link a few months back along with a message that said about maybe it being helpful for easing the stress of the end of year exams and upcoming college applications and the uncertainty they would bring. He’d read the message over and over after he received it, trying to decide if he was just being paranoid and she’d sent the message to everyone she followed, or if she had been paying him more attention than he gave her credit for.

Zoe’s account isn’t one he follows, but it is one he checks embarrassingly regularly for updates. It would be easier to follow it than search for her profile every time he wants to see what she’s posted, but Evan’s very aware other people can see who you follow, and he just knows Jared would be even more impossible than usual if he noticed that Evan was following her. Not that that would make much of a difference now; Jared doesn’t even want to look at him anymore, and Evan still doesn’t know why.

There aren’t any new posts on Zoe’s profile today, Evan finds when he checks it, but there she has added something to her story. He taps on the tiny round picture of her sat on the back of a bench, feet on the seat and guitar in hand and eyes focused on something off to the side as she plays. She’s smiling in the photo, a shy, secretive sort of smile given to something off camera that Evan has felt unfairly jealous of since she first changed her profile picture. He isn’t even all that sure he wants it to be her who smiles at him like that anymore, just someone. Anyone.

Not that anyone would because he’s a mess and whatever, but his lonely heart can still hope when it isn’t too busy anxiously fretting instead.

Zoe’s story isn’t long. There are just two photos on it, one of a pack of sparkly pens in an assortment of colours, and another of her guitar propped up on what Evan thinks might be her school books. On her guitar, where he didn’t think there were before, are stars, doodled in sparkling pink and purple and blue and green and silver and gold. They’re artistically drawn, the pattern pretty and natural and so, so _Zoe_, and something Evan never would have done because he just couldn’t do something so permanent as draw on a guitar without stressing over whether what he had drawn would come out good enough.

Zoe can though, it seems.

Of course she can.

It isn’t until Evan opens up the story again for a second look that he notices the background of the photo.

The books propping up the guitar on the desk are indeed school exercise books, Zoe clearly had intentions of studying before she got distracted by doodling, but what is written on one of the few pages visible in the picture isn’t school work at all.

Beside the books containing what look to be math and geography, is a page torn free, one that contains carefully scripted words written in a glittery dark blue pen and surrounded by tiny, silver stars. The paper they are on is lined too, and a little of Evan wonders if she’s doodled the words whilst attempting her homework. Most of him is wondering about the words themselves though, the four lines made of two rhyming couplets that are almost definitely song lyrics, and knowing Zoe, ones she has made up herself as she works. Or not works, it seems.

The story ends and vanishes and then opens again with another tap.

Evan keeps his thumb on the screen this time, halting the story as he reads her words over and over and over until they’re committed to his memory, burnt onto his retinas still in Zoe’s loopy cursive scripted in glittery gel pen. He reads, feeling curious then confused then so, so sad, until he realises his eyes are wet and blurring his heart is aching. He isn’t even sure who it’s aching for any more.

Blinking tears he refuses to shed from tired eyes, he focuses on the screen and reads

_when your strumming hand is shaking_

_and your rhythm is a mess_

_but ignorance won’t see past a smile_

_so the world will never guess_

one last time before he locks the phone and stands and takes his plate from the table.

He considers the lyrics as he loads the dishwasher, wonders if Zoe wrote them, if she actually meant to catch them in the picture along with her guitar, if she’s struggling too and just doing a better job of hiding it than her brother is. Evan hopes she isn’t. She deserves to be happy.

Once the dishwasher is stacked and running, Evan finds himself staring at the counter, at his pan and the wooden spatula still sat on the counter along with his pan and spatula from yesterday and a couple of baking trays and a collection of coloured glasses that Heidi bought before she realised they weren’t meant to be put in the dishwasher. He considers washing up the mess he has left on the counter, considers the itchy, irritating cast he knows can’t get wet, considers how he got it and why, and then goes upstairs to distract himself with the homework he needs to do but can’t instead.

Later that evening, after two more hours of staring blankly at math questions he needs to answer whilst his brain considers life and death and branches and literal life savers and upset (family) friends and heart-breaking song lyrics, Evan makes the decision to get a grip and solve at least one of those enigmas. He leaves his desk and crawls onto his bed and sits back against the headboard, knees bent up and arms in his lap and phone in his hands and then pauses there, unsteady thumbs hovering over the tiny qwerty keyboard open at the bottom of Jared’s Skype conversation as he considers what to type.

The throb of his heart is as unsteady as his thumbs and the flutter in his chest intensifies as he types the message then corrects the typos. It reaches an awfully unpleasant crescendo just as he presses send.

**-**Thursday 5 Sept. 19:17-

**Hi, have I done something wrong? You seem mad?**

The little orange moon beside Jared’s profile picture, a photo of him pointing up at a photoshop banner reading “The Incredibly Cool Jared Kleinman” arching over his head, blinks into a small, green circle almost as soon as the message has sent. Only seconds later the trio of dancing dots appears at the bottom of the conversation as he types his reply.

Evan worries his already too short nails as he waits, his breathing held in anticipation. He tastes iron just as the dots disappear.

**-**Thursday 5 Sept. 19:20-

**Pretty sure you’re too much of an anxious wreck **

**to do anything that might even possibly cause the **

**slightest of offence, daddy issues.**

Evan blinks at the text, frowning as he reads, hurt gnawing in his gut and then physically flinches at the stab brought by the final two words. The whole message, though possibly true, is harsh and brutal and written to hurt and the ending, a nickname formed years back in middle school when Evan’s father had first made his exit, is there simply out of spite. It isn’t a name that has ever been used fondly, one said at first to tease and then used with increasing frequency when Jared realised just how much Evan disliked.

It isn’t a name that has been used in years, though, and Evan remembers the reason why.

The last time it was used was during the first year of high school on a day that hadn’t been a good day at all anyway when, after a little too much teasing and one too many hurtful nicknames, he’d suffered his first full scale panic attack. It was one that had left him hyperventilating and dizzy and sick to his stomach and he’d thrown up and very nearly passed out in the toilets.

Jared had sat with him on the floor of the stall as they waited for the help a boy Evan can’t quite picture had gone to fetch, his terrified expression blurred by tears and his encouragements to _breathe_ distant and marred by the rushing of blood in Evan’s ears and the too loud rattle of his lungs as they’d fought for breaths he couldn’t remember how to take. The trembling, sweaty hand he’d wrapped around Evan’s hadn’t been distant though, it had been grounding and comforting and real and it had helped, held him to the tendrils of reality when he was so, so close to falling into the abyss.

Through the panic attack that Jared had undeniably, though accidentally, caused, he had been there to help, to ground, to comfort. He had said the name to tease, to hurt, but his guilt and care was clear in the shake of his hands and his terrified expression and the fact he’d stayed. He’d meant to hurt, yes, but not to the extent he had.

This time is different.

His (family) friend isn’t there to comfort now.

He isn’t there to solve the pain he has now purposefully caused.

Evan folds his arms over his knees and rests his head on top as he tries to hold himself together, tries to not think about how Jared has clearly demoted him from family friend, how he now clearly hates him for a reason Evan doesn’t understand at all.

How Jared would probably be happy if he did disappear tomorrow.

At some point, later in the evening when his broken mind is reeling a little less, Evan realises the sleeves of the hoodie are damp beneath his face and his eyelashes are sticky with salt.

There’s a knock at his bedroom door. It’s quiet and tentative, but he still startles abruptly out of the dark place his thoughts had been wandering through for the last however many hours.

“Come in?” The words fail in a throat that’s dry with disuse and only afterwards does Evan realised that other than his ‘here’ in registration and the ‘come in’ allowing his mom into his room, he hasn’t spoken a single word all day. He clears his throat and tries again, and this time Heidi must hear as the handle twists and then pale wood door swings cautiously open.

“Hey, honey, I thought you’d be asleep, it’s late,” his mom greets, a frown in her tired eyes but a smile on her lips. She’s still wearing her light summer jacket over her blouse, just home from school, Evan thinks, and he wonders if she had stayed late after class to work since she would normally get home just after ten and that isn’t what she’d consider late.

“What time is it?”

“Just after midnight.”

Evan nods numbly. It had been just after 7 when he’d messaged Jared. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Heidi’s brow briefly furrows before she pointedly looks around his room, takes in the open curtains and glowing lights and the fact he’s still dressed from school and sat on his bed rather than in it.

“It might help if you turned out the lights, you know?” she suggests lightly, and she’s kind of teasing Evan knows, trying to find the good in everything, so he forces an attempt of a smile onto his lips.

“Gee, thanks,” he tries to jest back. It comes out much flatter than he was intending.

Heidi frowns, dithering in the doorway for a moment, and then comes to sit beside him on the bed.

“Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t been around much this week,” she starts, tone sincere. “I know I said I would be and-”

“Mom, it’s fine.”

“No, Evan,” she says, and she sounds kind of sad. Defeated, almost. “It isn’t.”

“You’re busy though, it’s- I don’t mind, it’s okay.”

Heidi looks about to argue, then doesn’t. “How’s school?” she asks instead. “You coping okay?

Evan blinks at the change in topic. He looks up from the loose thread he’s found in the hem of his shirt to find she’s watching him through tired blue eyes. “Yeah, it’s- schools great.”

“That’s good.” She seems to be searching for something to say, Evan can almost see her brain whirring as she struggles. Her eyes are searching too before they finally settle. “Hey, someone signed your cast!”

Evan heart stutters a little in sudden panic as he follows her gaze to the ‘C’ just about visible on the fibreglass sticking out of his hoodie.

Or not _his_ hoodie.

“Oh, yeah, it’s, um- he’s in my homeroom, and we’re in English together too. And math, and science, and um, history, actually.”

“That’s really good, honey. I’m proud of you, you know.” Heidi’s smile is, for once, genuine. “Did Jared sign it too?”

“Oh, no, he, um-.” Evan lets his gaze fall to the restless fingers still on a mission to destroy his hem. “I- I forgot to ask.”

“Maybe you can ask next week?”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

A brief silence falls. It’s Heidi who breaks it.

“Evan, you would tell me if weren’t coping okay, wouldn’t you?” she starts almost cautiously. “I know you said you wanted to be back at school from the start of the year but, well, you went through a lot this summer, and there’s nothing wrong with having a bit more time off if you need it.

Evan’s suddenly racing heart calms a little at the realisation she’s not talking about his mental health, but his visibly dubious physical health instead. He can cope with that. Just about.

“Mom, I’m fine, really,” he placates as he forces a smile, forces his averted eyes back up from his shirt, forces himself to breathe despite the air being suddenly thick. It isn’t really a lie, he tells himself, because he is fine, physically, or as fine as he could be given he very nearly died not even a month ago, but otherwise…

Otherwise, Evan knows he isn’t fine, and even though that isn’t what his mom was asking him about, it still feels like he’s lying to her face when he tells her he is because he really, really isn’t.

The not-lie, half-lie, whatever it was, is suffocating.

He wonders if Heidi can feel it too.

“That’s good,” she says softly, her own forced smile on her lips. She looks to deliberate for a moment, and then pushes herself to her feet. “Try and get some sleep soon, okay? You look tired.”

Evan nods. He is tired. Exhausted in so, so many ways. 

Heidi looks tired too, but then, he guesses she would. She works a lot, she always has but she does more so now than before, now that she has the financial enigma of his hospital bill to solve and hours to make up that she lost sat beside him when he was there in that bed, wasting her time on him despite him being mostly asleep and barely conscious even when he wasn’t.

He didn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve her.

“I could sing you to sleep.”

“What?” Evan glances up, confused. The tension in his ribcage eases just a little.

“Like when you were little.”

Heidi’s smile becomes just a little more genuine at the frown he can’t help but pull. He’s aware he looks baffled. He’s aware there are worse ways to look too, so he rolls with it. 

“You don’t remember?”

Evan shakes his head.

“That’s probably for the best,” Heidi laughs, and it doesn’t sound entirely forced. “You didn’t get your singing voice from me for sure.” She looks at him for a second, expression undeservedly fond, and then settles down beside him again.

“You were always a restless sleeper,” she starts softly, tone warm and distant with memory, “It was always such a task to get you to bed even when you were tiny, and then after your dad left, you started to wake up again in the middle of the night too, always shaking and wild from nightmares you would never explain, and every night I’d pull you onto my lap and hold you tight so you knew you weren’t alone.” She takes his hand as though to prove her point.

“I’d take you back to bed after you’d calmed, and then on the bad nights when you still couldn’t bear to be alone, I’d climb in beside you, and then if you still couldn’t settle, I’d sing to you until you fell asleep again.”

Evan blinks, swallows down a suddenly dry throat. “What did you sing?” His voice is breathy. It cracks a little.

Heidi smiles. “I’m not really sure what it was, it was just a tune your father sung to me when we were young, a sweet little song. I don’t know if he made it up himself or…” she trails off and shrugs. “It was really sweet though, that song, and I guess on my mind a lot at the time.”

“How did it go?”

“I can’t quite remember how it went,” she says dismissively, “but the message sort of said that although I couldn’t solve everything, although I couldn’t make everything magically better, I would never leave, I would always be there for you.”

Evan scoffs lightly under his breath. “Didn’t you say Mark sung it to you?”

Heidi frowns a little, expression wounded, and Evan entirely understands why she’s hurt and he knows he shouldn’t have said it, but it just sort of happened, the bitter fragment of his brain, the part angry at her for always being busy, for never being there despite what she’s just said, spitting venom at her words. He regrets it though. She doesn’t deserve to be hurt like that.

“Sorry,” he mutters, eyes again averted, and picks roughly at abused fiberglass.

Heidi sighs. It sounds sad though, not angry. “I know you father turned out to be deserting shit who ran away anyway, but that wasn’t-” She breaks off and takes a breath. Her tone is again soft when she continues. “I always meant it, Evan, more than anything, and I still do. I know it may not seem like it sometimes because I’m like always working, or at school, but I’ll always be here for you if you need me, okay? I’m like a phone call away. Or a text or an email or-”

“Mom,” Evan interrupts gently. He looks up and catches her eye. “I know.”

Heidi pauses, then smiles the sad, pained smile he’s so used to seeing. “You’re a good kid.” She takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. Evan squeezes back. “Now,” she says, “it’s late, we should both get some sleep.”

Evan nods, and she releases his hand and stands back up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, after work probably. Try and get some rest, okay?”

“Okay.”

She gives him another faux smile then crosses the room as though to leave but then pauses in the threshold and turns back. Her expression is curiously unreadable behind her ever-present smile. “I love you,” she says, tone odd.

Evan nods at his knees. “I love you too.”

Heidi’s smile droops just as she turns away, her mask slipping just a fraction too early. The door clicks softly as she closes it behind her and then, despite his mom’s words just seconds earlier, Evan is alone once again.

He waits for her to finish in the bathroom then readies himself for bed and then, after closing his curtains and turning off the lights, he climbs under his duvet. He lays there awake in the dark, mind too busy to sleep, too rattled to even consider trying and counts the fading glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling as until they run out of charge and disappear from view. 


	10. It's all fun and Games

On Saturday, Evan is startled from a restless sleep by a rattling sort of sound.

His hazel eyes flash open to find a bedroom that is painfully bright despite the drawn curtains, the September sun higher in the sky behind the faded blue cotton than it should be for early in the morning. The room feels warm too, the heating apparently already manually turned on by his mom, and the sound of lazy Saturday traffic drifts in from outside. The house inside is quiet save for the gurgling of the heating and the rattling sound that had woken him.

It takes Evan’s sleep muddled brain longer than it should to realise that maybe it isn’t as early in the morning as he first assumed it was, which would make sense really, kind of, as last time he had forced his exhausted eyes to focus on the blurry clock on his phone screen, it had been just past four in the morning and he was yet to sleep. So maybe, hopefully, it isn’t early in the morning, it’s later in the day and, despite the leaden tiredness that hasn’t shifted from his brain or bones, he’s actually managed to get a decent amount of sleep.

It would mean there’s less of the day to be awake through too, and that’s always a bonus.

The rattling continues, harsh and abrupt but quiet enough that Evan is kind of surprised it woke him, and, actually, not a ratting at all, but the sound of something, his phone to be exact, vibrating against a hard surface as it rings. He frowns, wondering why Heidi would be calling him from work, and then blinks in confusion because it turns out not to be his mom who’s phoning, or not anyone phoning, but an alert of an incoming skype call from Jared.

Evan answers almost out of instinct.

“Why aren’t you answering?” Jared demands as soon as the call connects, eyebrows pinched and expression clearly irritated even on the tiny screen. He looks to be outside, there’s overexposed blue sky and a fragment of a tree just visible in the corner behind the smaller picture of Evan’s own face. It’s too small to be clear and the resolution awful, but Evan’s suddenly very aware that he likely looks a mess, still half asleep with eyes squinting in the sudden light and hair uncombed and pyjama top just about visible. “Are you still in bed?”

Jared sounds incredulous, and Evan kind of realises why when he finds the clock in the corner of his screen.

13:37 it reads.

His cheeks heat in embarrassment.

“I um- I wasn’t feeling great,” he stutters, and it’s partially true, he isn’t feeling great even if it’s more mental than physical. He is still tired though, physically exhausted, and with an ache in his head that isn’t particularly bad but is there all the same. A thought crosses his sluggish mind. “Hang on, answering what?”

“Your door, dumbass.”

“You’re here?”

“Duh?”

“You didn’t know I was in?”

“Where else would you be? You literally never go out.”

Evan kind of wants to argue that because it really isn’t true. It was a few years ago, sure, but last year and most of this he’d spent his Saturdays working at Ellison and he would likely still be doing so if he hadn’t fallen from a tree a broken his arm and his kidney and their finances. He’s still welcome back once he’s fully healed, he’s been told so by Tom, but he isn’t all that sure he could any more.

No, he knows he couldn’t.

“Look, are you going to let me in or not?” Jared snaps impatiently through tinny speakers and Evan returns his wandering thoughts to the room. He sighs at Jared’s petulant expression and refrains from rolling his eyes. “Hang on.”

“Man, you do look rough,” Jared says in greeting once the door is open, his eyes critical under raised brows. His gaze hovers on the still pink scar set in yellowed skin high on Evan’s forehead for long enough that Evan wonders if he’s only just realised it’s there. Maybe he has; it isn’t as though they’ve stood this close since their brief conversation beside the lockers nearly a week ago.

“Thanks,” he mutters sarcastically, wondering if he should take offence or not. Sure, he’s still kind of asleep and squinting in the sun and his voice is croaky with disuse and his hair is utterly dishevelled, sticking up on one side and pressed to his head on the other, and he’s aware the pyjamas and glasses aren’t helping his appearance, but he didn’t think he looked that bad. Not bad enough that Jared would be pulling the genuinely concerned expression he currently is anyway. Evan pulls the too big hoodie tighter around himself, arms hugging his chest.

“Do you want to go back to bed?”

He shakes his head, wondering if Jared had mistaken his unease for chills. “Why are you here?”

“I needed help with the bio homework. Have you looked at it yet, it’s fucking insane?!” He pauses, briefly considering, then smirks. “Actually, no, of course you have, you’ve probably already done it, right, tree-boy?”

Despite the mocking tone, Jared would normally be right, Evan usually would already have his homework done within a couple of days of it being set, he’s normally on top of it half because he’s an anxious wreck who can’t leave things to the last minute and half because it isn’t as if he has much else to do with his evenings. He isn’t right in this case though, Evan’s not at all on top of his homework, he’s decidedly slacking and simultaneously struggling to find much energy to care and inches away from having a full on breakdown over it.

“I- ugh, no, I haven’t-”

“Okay, well, we can do it together. Or like, you can do it and I can provide support and then copy your answers, seems fair?”

Evan can’t quite work out if his grin is teasing or not.

“Um-”

Jared sighs. “Are you going to let me in or just stutter in your doorway for the rest of eternity?”

“I don’t stutter,” Evan protests weakly, but steps aside to allow Jared in.

He rolls his eyes as he passes. “Yeah, and cows don’t fart.”

Jared sets his books out on the table whilst Evan retrieves his own from his room. He changes into jeans and a green shirt whilst he’s upstairs and quickly brushes his teeth and attempts to flatten his hair and then, almost as an afterthought, swaps his glasses for the contact lenses he usually wears.

He wouldn’t usually bother putting them in at home, but Jared is round, and Jared is actually kind of the reason he started wearing them in the first place. It’s kind of hypocritical really because Jared himself wears glasses, but when Evan had found out he needed them in the middle of 10th grade, it had been Jared who had teased him relentlessly until, a few days after he had been given the glasses, Evan had stopped wearing them and resumed squinting at the whiteboard. He’d ended up with contact lenses the next summer after Heidi had cornered him and asked about his still frequent headaches and he’d admitted a little of what had happened. She still didn’t know it had been Jared who started the teasing, but she didn’t really need to.

Jared has made himself a coffee when Evan finally makes it back downstairs and is sipping it at the table as he fiddles with a tablet-like thing he’s placed on top of his books.

“What’s the WiFi password?” he asks without looking up.

“Ugh, it’s on the fridge, but like, don’t use too much. It’s limited, like we don’t get much,” he hastily adds in explanation at Jared’s raised eyebrows. “Did you just make yourself coffee?”

“You can’t drink coffee, caffeine makes you weirder, remember?” He grins down at his tablet. “Do you remember that time in 9th grade when you had those cans of Red Bull at Samantha Bell’s birthday party and-”

“Yes, thank you, Jared,” Evan interrupts, not really wanting to hear another retelling of the time he, or more his pre-Xanax anxiety sharpened by the caffeine, had thought he was having some sort of heart attack because of how quickly his was pounding and how much his clammy hands were shaking. It turned out those are all just symptoms of too much caffeine though, and that he was just particularly sensitive to it, and so he’s since, as a rule, avoided it unless he needs it. He’s tired though, and still a little headachy, and he has work to do and Jared to deal with, so he decides the extra energy is more than worth the shakiness and thrumming heart the coffee will bring and goes to make his own.

“What’s that?” he asks as he waits for the kettle to boil, nodding pointedly at the tablet on the table. It isn’t a normal sort of tablet, it has buttons on the side set into coloured handles, one blue, and one red. 

“Nintendo switch,” Jared explains smugly, eyes still on the screen. “Smash bros just came out, it has all 72 characters from the previous games.” He says it like that’s something Evan should be exited over. “I just got it and I need to test out two player and Ben says he’s too busy and Ellie won’t play and like, even if she would she’s even shitter at video games than you are.”

Evan tries not to take offence at the true but snide comment. He can understand entirely why Jared’s little sister won’t play with him though; he’s a bad loser and an even worse winner.

“Don’t you have, like, camp friends to play it with?”

“It’s local multiplayer only.”

“Coding Club friends?”

“Look, do you want to play or not? You should be honoured by my company, you’d be home alone all day otherwise.”

“I thought you wanted to do homework?”

Jared sighs. “Yeah, fine, homework first, then I get to whip you ass at Smash bros.”

“Okay,” Evan agrees with a sigh. He pulls the text book towards him and starts to read. He’s half way through the paragraph before he realises Jared it is watching him over the top of his game console.

Just as Jared predicted, Evan is decidedly shit at smash bros. He’s pretty bad at video games in general, and as he’d tried to explain to Jared many a time when they were young, it’s because although he understands the concepts and what he needs to do, he can never seem to get the characters to walk exactly where he wants them to which often results in him walking into walls or falling into pits or jumping off ledges and missing the one he’s meant to be landing on completely. More often than not, he ends up falling to his death, and although he isn’t quite sure he’s in the right headspace for that at the moment, he can’t exactly say so to Jared because he’s giving him enough weird looks as it is.

“How are you so crap at this, are you trying to die,” Jared exclaims in frustration after Evan misses a jump for the third time in a row and loses his last life. He is playing even worse than he normally would be though, he’ll give Jared that, but he just can’t find the energy to try to explain that the controllers are really very tiny, and his casted hand isn’t quite flexible enough to be able to reach all the fiddly little buttons and that isn’t really helping at all.

Playing the game kind of hurts his wrist too, but he isn’t going to complain.

Evan shrugs silently in reply and looks over from the screen just in time to Jared frowning at him with a look he can’t quite decipher.

They play Mario Kart afterwards, when Jared finally gets bored of restarting the game, and it would be HD Mario Kart except the Hansen’s TV isn’t modern enough, a fact Jared complains about repeatedly until the game starts and he can resume laughing at Evan because, although he isn’t all that bad at Mario Kart, he’s play using tilt controls and that isn’t a Jared-dictated acceptable way of playing.

It wasn’t back when they played on Jared’s Wii either.

Evan’s never really understood what’s so funny about it; that’s what you’re meant to do with a Wii controller, isn’t it? They have motion controls for a reason. He’d tried to explain that to Jared back then when they’d first started playing it together, and Evan still remembers how his 7 year old self had sat on the floor, confused and hurting as Jared had hugged his stomach and literally rolled on the floor with exaggerated laughter.

17 year old Jared no longer rolls on the floor or hugs his stomach when he laughs, he snickers under his breath and makes sarcastic, patronising comments and gives these amused, incredulous sort of smiles that kind of hurt more than the belly laughter of his younger self. Evan tries to ignore it, tries to focus on driving his virtual car on the bizarre virtual racetracks, tries to force himself into enjoying the game and the fact he isn’t going to be home alone all weekend.

Focusing helps, surprisingly, but more because Jared’s laughter stops and he sobers a little when Evan manages to beat him during a particularly well driven round on Rainbow Road.

“That was just luck,” Jared scoffs dismissively, and then restarts the same level as though he needs to prove just so. He does win on his second attempt and looks over at Evan with eyebrows raised and says, “see, told you so,” before picking the next level.

They play together through tracks and tracks, there’s cows in one, and a snowy mountain in another, and one where they’re trying to race along a road with traffic already driving along it which Jared seems to hate because he gets frustrated enough to pause the game, turn on automatic steering and acceleration and let the game drive the car around the rest of the track for him. He pretends he’s only letting the car drive itself because it’s funny, which, Evan agrees that it kind of is, but they both know he was just not enjoying losing in the slightest.

During one level, Jared’s belly laughter does make a reappearance, and, despite himself, Evan finds himself laughing too. It’s Evan’s driving they end up laughing at, kind of, but more because he’s somehow managed to spin his car 180 degrees and, as a result, is driving entirely the wrong way around the track.

And he can’t work out how to stop. Because turns out you don’t need to hold the fiddly little buttons down any more to accelerate and so the car keeps going even when he releases the buttons.

And he can’t work out how to turn around either because the track is narrow and twisty and tilt controls don’t work 100 % perfectly when one of your wrists doesn’t bend at all. 

“Ugh, Jared?”

“What?” Jared asks, and then seems to notice the fact that Evan’s half of the screen now contains a little yellow turtle floating in a cloud and holding a sign that makes it very clear he needs to turn his car around. He lets out a laugh. “What the fuck have you done?” he asks though his amusement, glancing between the screen and Evan’s panicked expression and unexpectedly, Evan finds himself giggling too.

The giggles turn to laughter as he watches his character heading in entirely the wrong direction, the tension slipping from his shoulders as they jiggle uncontrollably in amusement.

Evan’s laughter is weirdly quiet, more just broken breathing and physical shaking, until, suddenly, on one gasped inhale, it isn’t.

Jared looks over, eyebrows raised, at the unnaturally high-pitched squeak that has just left Evan’s throat, and then gasps a “What was that?” before he’s laughing entirely uncontrollably, his joy-con now laying on his lap in limp hands as he lays bonelessly back against the sofa cushions.

A moment later, and Evan is weak and breathless too.

It’s odd, he thinks, because he knows neither the game not his unintentional squeaking inhale were even that funny, but the laughter is unstoppable once started, it’s like the tension and stress of the week are flowing free like water from a dam burst open. Jared seems unable to stop too, and so, for a while, they laugh.

Jared is still there when Heidi returns from work.

“Evan, are you-.” She stops when she enters their lounge, a light rain coat over her scrubs and shopping bags in her hands. Her tired expression morphs into a smile that for once looks entirely genuine as she pauses there to take in the scene of Jared sat upright, controller in his hands and eyes on the TV and Evan curled up at the other end of the sofa, his hair still a mess and his head resting back against the cushions as he watches Jared playing through heavy, weary eyes. It isn’t overly interesting, and he still doesn’t understand what’s going on in the game or with Jared at all, but it still does beat sitting at home alone all day and he’s actually managed to get his and Jared’s biology homework done and that’s a bonus.

The laughter had helped too, as confusing as it was.

“Oh, hi, Jared. I didn’t know you were coming round,” Heidi says, glancing between them, her smile still radiant but a small frown in her eyes. 

Evan shrugs under his mom’s questioning gaze to try and convey that he didn’t know Jared was coming either.

Jared pauses the game and turns to face her, and Evan can’t quite see what expression he’s pulling from the angles he’s at, but he can see his mom melt a little when he pulls it. Jared has been good with adults for as long as Evan can remember, polite yet confident enough for them to just like him, and although Evan’s normally grateful because it means Jared used to be able to do the talking for the both of them, he’s still a little bitter that Heidi is no exception to his charm. It kind of sucks when your mom likes her best friend’s kid more that her own.

“It was kind of a spur of the moment decision really, I woke up this morning and decided seeing Evan was what I wanted to do today, and so-” he shrugs, holding out his arms “-here I am.”

Heidi raises an eyebrow, her lips pressed together in badly stifled amusement. “That’s nice, I’m glad you two are getting along. Are you staying for dinner? I’m cooking mac and cheese.”

Jared winces. “I’d love to, Heidi, but we’re doing a family dinner tonight; it’s Ben’s last night before he goes back to college so …” He shrugs, smile apologetic, and then glances at the clock on the mantel. “Actually, I should probably be heading home.”

“Oh, okay, maybe another time. I’m sure Evan would love to have you round for dinner again, it’s been ages.”

She glances over at Evan, expression expectant.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he mutters, picking at a loose thread of fibreglass.

“It’s just such a shame we’re all so busy all the time,” Jared sighs, and Evan knows what he actually means is he has things he would much rather do than spend time with the awkward family friend he now blatantly snubs but can’t exactly say that. He doesn’t miss the flicker of guilt that crosses his mom’s expression before she schools it away.

Evan frowns at her hurt.

“I’m sure we can find some time somewhere,” she reasons lightly, smile tighter than before, and then abruptly changes the topic. “So, how is Ben doing, your mom said he worked this summer at the bowling alley?”

Jared saves his game and then packs his console back into the satchel style bag he’d brought it in, all the while animatedly chatting with Heidi about school and work and about his parents and three siblings and Albert their elderly dog. Evan watches from his curled position on the sofa and tries not to be hurt that his mom has barely said a word to him since she arrived.

He follows Jared to the table once he’s done, watches as he packs up his school books and has an internal argument with himself over whether to ask Jared why he’s suddenly swapped from ignoring him to appearing unannounced at his door and spending the afternoon with him doing homework and playing video games. Sure, it could just have been that he needed help with biology and wanted to play two-player Smash Bros, but Evan doesn’t quite believe it. He doesn’t know what’s going on with Jared and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Hell, he doesn’t know what to do about anything, really. 

“Are you having an aneurism?”

Jared’s staring at him when Evan wrestles his brain back to the dining room, his expression amused, and his eyebrows raised mockingly.

“I, um, no! I just, it’s … no, it’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Jared’s lips curl at his discomfort. “If you say so.” He huffs a laugh of incredulity as shrugs his backpack over one shoulder. “Anyway, I’m off, dinner to eat, parents to please, you know how it goes.” 

Evan nods as though he does and then follows Jared into the hallway. It’s Jared who unlocks the door and opens it.

“See you Monday, Acorn,” he says as he leaves, waving backwards over his head. Evan calls his own quiet goodbye and then goes back inside his house and closes the door. He leans against it for a moment, collecting his reeling thoughts, and then heads to the kitchen in search of his mom.

As promised, she’s at the stove preparing mac and cheese for dinner, and after a moment of deliberation, Evan sits down at the kitchen table to be with her as she cooks because although he’s exhausted and confused, his mind, as always, anxious and worry about himself and Connor and his mom, and now reeling with questions after Jared’s visit too, and doesn’t really fancy conversation, he doesn’t really feel like being alone right now either.

To his relief, they don’t really talk much and Heidi doesn’t press him on it, she tells him a bit about her day and asks a few questions about Jared’s visit but then puts on the radio and he wonders if maybe she understands that conversation isn’t what he needs right now. She sings along to the radio and, despite everything, he finds a small smile creep onto his bitten lips as he listens to her honest but kind of off pitch singing.

She was right the night before when she mentioned him not getting his voice from her because although she can’t really sing, Evan really kind of can. It’s a hidden talent though, one lost to social anxiety, one that it’s unlikely anyone save for his mom and Jared will ever know about it. They used to sing together the kitchen whilst she cooked when he was younger, back when Heidi was around in the evenings, but they haven’t done so in years.

Evan realises that he hasn’t sung for nearly as long. He kind of wonders if he still can.

They eat together for a change, the radio still on and the conversation small but warm, and afterwards Heidi washes up and Evan dries the dishes and manages not to drop anything despite his twitchy hands and casted wrist. She has school that evening though, so when the dishes are done and put away, she goes to change from scrubs to clothes and then, after a quick goodbye and a promise to be around more tomorrow, she heads off to class.

Evan spends the evening and most of Sunday alone.

Heidi does come home for dinner as she promised she would that morning and she cooks whilst he vaguely attempts math homework and tries to answer her questions on what he’s been doing that day. Homework, he tells her, and it’s partially true, he had got it out and sat before it but then instead of working he’d started at the blurry lines on the paper of his exercise book whilst he contemplated Jared and Connor and pills and trees and the fragility of life. He can hardly explain that though. He can’t explain any of it.

She decides they should spend some time together after dinner and so they end up sat beside each other on the worn sofa and, after suggestions from Heidi and indecisiveness from Evan, they put on the next episode of Stranger Things. Heidi falls asleep a short way into the second episode. It’s barely past nine but Evan knows she’s exhausted and he knows he’s the reason why just as he knows if he wakes her to tell her to go to bed, she’ll protest and insist on spending time with him, so instead he softly stands and gently covers her with the ratty blanket that lives on the arm of their sofa. He plugs her phone into charge and makes sure her alarm is set and then turns off the TV and the lights and leaves her to sleep.

He heads upstairs and readies himself for bed out of little else to do and then contemplates writing one of the letters he knows he’s still meant to be writing but isn’t. It wouldn’t be a good letter if he did write one, though, his mind is struggling for neutrals let alone positives, so he doesn’t. He removes his laptop from his duvet and climbs into bed instead.

Unlike his mother, Evan doesn’t sleep.

Monday passes in his new shitty normal and with the window between him and the world frostier than normal. Jared is late for homeroom, and then seems a find a way for avoiding speaking to Evan for the rest of school, so by the time he goes to bed, Evan doesn’t think he’s managed to talk to a single person all day.

Heidi is home when Evan wakes Tuesday morning, and as she has a late start that day, she offers to drive him to school. It’s more for her benefit that his that he accepts because she looks so desperate to help and sounds so guilty when she points out that she’s been making him get the bus to school and then home again when it was debatable whether he was well enough to even go back yet.

Evan doesn’t correct her, doesn’t tell her how exhausting walking to school and back is at the moment.

He kind of wishes he hadn’t accepted her offer by the time they’re half way to school, though, because she’s decided now is a good time to start bugging him about writing the essays for the scholarship competitions she has found during her breaks. The questions have been slowly pilling up on his desk since she first discovered them and he knows they really do need writing because they’re pretty much his only shot at going to college this year what with their finances being such a mess, but he really, really cannot find the motivation to do so. College seems almost surreal, so inconsequential compared to the mess he’s in at the moment.

Or is he in a mess, really, he can’t tell how much of it is his anxiety and how much of it is real. Sure, he’s not in a great headspace at the moment and he knows Connor isn’t either but is that all that much of a problem? Well, maybe Connor is, Evan’s pretty sure he’s on the brink of falling and although he himself is too, he doesn’t really matter in the same way Connor does. Maybe Connor will be fine though.

Maybe he will be too.

He supresses a laugh at the thought and Heidi sneaks a glance over at him, her eyes momentarily away from the road.

“What’s funny?” she asks, expression light and curious and a bit confused which does make sense really because Evan thinks she might have been making suggestions on what he could write for an essay on ‘If you could change one moment of your past, what would it be and why’.

“Oh, nothing, I was just, um-,” he searches for a change of topic, “Are you working tonight?”

“No, tonight’s my night off, remember? We can work on those essays if you’d like? Or, ooh, I know, you could invite Jared round, how about that? We can do tacos, it is Tuesday after all!”

Evan would roll his eyes at her overly animated excitement if he had the energy.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll ask him in homeroom,” he agrees as he picks at the edge of his cast.

Evan does ask Jared in homeroom if he wants to come for dinner but receives a raised eyebrow and a snide comment in reply. 

“My insurance is getting paid for good few months seeing as I spent all afternoon at yours on Saturday, so ask again in hmmm-” he tilts his head, mimes thinking “-December, maybe.”

Jared’s decline of his invite turns out not to matter anyway as Heidi sends a text at lunch explaining she’s been requested to stay at work late so will go straight to class and asks if he’s okay with having a Taco Thursday instead. Evan isn’t really, but he tells her he is, and she replies almost instantly with an ‘Oh, good!’ followed by another message suggesting they work on the scholarship essays together over email whilst she’s at work as though that’s a substitute to physically parenting.

Evan doesn’t attempt scholarship essays that evening. He sits at his desk and stares at homework he can’t work out how to solve instead and thinks about life and death is a vague, abstract kind of way. His leg judders as he sits there, anxiety bubbling uncomfortably and heart stuttering and his broken wrist sore inside his cast. It hurts still in a way he’s pretty sure it shouldn’t, dully throbbing in a constant reminder of what he tried to do. He isn’t even all that sure the pain is real any more, it’s been weeks since his surgery and even longer since he broke his arm and according to google, fractures don’t usually hurt quite so much for quite so long.

It might just be in his head. He wouldn’t be surprised, just another sign of how broken he really is.

He gives up on homework eventually, and instead guiltily finds a dodgy copy of the first Harry Potter movie on the internet and curls up in his bed to watch it. He tries not to think of the conversations he’s had with Connor on the subject, tries not to think of Connor in general but that’s pretty hard because that’s pretty much all his anxious, struggling mind can focus on at the moment. Connor has actually been at school the past few days, although unless you were actually looking out for him, you’re unlikely to notice he’s there.

Despite his reputation, Connor isn’t a trouble at school unless he’s provoked, seeming to prefer to blur into the shadows and disappear just as much as Evan often would. High school is brutal at times, and unless you can defend yourself, which Evan knows Connor could if he wanted to because he’s seen him throw a punch once before, hiding in the background is often for the best. 

Evan thinks he must have fallen asleep because next he knows he’s being startled back into consciousness by the feeling of his laptop moving on his knees. He jolts to catch it, only to touch something soft and warm rather than hard, cheap plastic, and when his eyes shoot open, he finds his mom beside him.

“Sorry, I was trying not to wake you,” she explains quietly as she lifts the now closed laptop from his knees. He sits up, blinking blearily and rubbing at his eyes. They feel gritty with and kind of sticky from sleeping with his contact lenses in, and he’s suddenly aware he must have been out for quite a while.

“Mmmm, ‘s alright,” he slurs, tongue asleep too, “I- um, contacts. What’s the time?”

“Just past ten, not too late.” Her tone is still abnormally quiet and a little concerned. “You feeling okay?” She holds the back of her hand to his forehead, and then seemingly content that he isn’t running a temperature, moves it to card though his hair instead.

Evan nods despite the hand on his head. “Yeah, just- um, just tired, I guess.”

Heidi seems to accept that and gives his hair another ruffle. There’s a smile on her lips, but her tired eyes don’t light. “Go get ready for bed,” she suggests gently. “I’ll let you have the bathroom first.”

Evan would probably try to think of something to say if he wasn’t still half asleep but instead, he nods and stands and then steadies himself on his bedpost when his head spins lightly. He’s aware of Heidi’s frown boring into his back as he leaves. 

When he returns in fresh pyjamas and with his teeth brushed, she’s sat on his bed and she stays there and watches as he takes out his contacts, only standing when he moves to get under his duvet.

“Goodnight, Honey. I love you,” she says, and she presses a kiss to the top of his head before leaving him to sleep.

To his surprise, Evan falls back asleep almost as soon as she is gone.

The peace is short lived, though, as he jolts abruptly from a nightmare barely an hour later, his heart racing and body trembling with adrenalin, and even after he’s physically calmed, his brain is much to troubled to get back to sleep.


	11. Until someone has a panic attack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, still plugging away at this for anyone who's still reading. Enjoy :)

On Thursday, Evan snaps.

He snaps because he’s tired, exhausted both physically and emotionally, and frustrated, angry at himself and Jared and his mom and the situation with Connor and at world in general, and heartbroken by the unfairness of the life he doesn’t really want to have.

It’s Jared he snaps at, because Jared is apparently willing to talk to him today, and to be fair, Jared kind of does deserve it.

“Why are you so annoyed with me?” Evan bursts after one too many of Jared’s snide remarks, stopping abruptly in the middle of the crowded hallway. “Will you just tell me what I’ve done?”

Jared stops a few steps later and turns sharply round to face Evan, his face suddenly warped into an unexpectedly hard and somewhat hurt expression. “You haven't done anything!” he snaps back with enough force that Evan finds himself flinching despite his anger.

“Then why are you doing this?” he demands after a moment, hurt and baffled, not understanding any of it in the slightest. He’s almost too focused on what on earth is going on with Jared to notice that they’re attracting quite a few odd looks. 

Jared holds his gaze, his eyes burning with something Evan finally understands to be frustration. “Because I'm just shit at dealing with my feelings, okay?”

“I- what?”

Jared sighs harshly and runs a hand though his hair and then takes hold of Evan’s wrist and pulls him through the curious stares of the students milling in the hall to the nearest boys’ bathroom.

It isn’t empty, Evan finds once they’re inside, there are a couple of younger boys there laughing at crude jokes whilst a third smirks at his reflection whilst he spikes his hair up in the mirror. The good half minute it takes for them to obliviously finish their conversation and realise they’re in the way of _something_ going on between two restless seniors who are resolutely avoiding eye contact passes like an age.

One of them passes Evan an odd look and a raised brow as he leaves. All three of them are snickering.

The door closes with a gentle clunk, and then Jared’s eyes flinch up from the paper towel he’s been forcefully drying his hands with. 

“You nearly died over the summer, didn't you?” he demands, the blue paper still clenched in his fist and his intense eyes fixed on Evan through tortoise-shell glasses.

Evan blinks stupidly, his lips suddenly parted and a frown on his brow because, after the anger and the snide comments and the blatant snubbing and Jared’s sudden declaration about being rubbish at dealing with his feelings, that isn’t what he had been expecting Jared to say at all. Not that he quite knows what he had been expecting. His reeling mind hadn’t been able to come up with any even vaguely reasonable explanation over the past few minutes, or the week before that.

It takes him a moment to really process what Jared has just said. His right hand finds his cast before he can stop it, fingers going tight over rough fiberglass. His shoulders are tight too, suddenly defensive.

“How do you know?” he asks, voice small and broken and unsure.

“Mom told me,” Jarred snaps harshly, expression tight, “at dinner the first day back. Or well, no, she actually asked how you were, and I said you were fine, and she seemed relived because apparently Heidi was worried about you, wasn't sure you were well enough for school yet which made no sense at all, and I scoffed and said you’d just broken your arm, and mom kind of flipped because turns out it wasn’t just a broken arm, was it?”

“Um, well, n-no, but-”

“You nearly died, Evan!” Jared spits the words like they hurt.

Evan tries not to flinch. He tries to understand why Jared is shouting at him too. He fails at both. “I don’t get why you’re angry!”

“Because you didn’t tell me!”

“Because I knew you wouldn’t have cared!” he finds himself shouting back without thinking.

Jared’s mouth, already open for another bout of yelling, snaps closed again. His expression falls, anger dissipating, draining away, and he blinks, suddenly frowning and confused and looking a little hurt.

Silence falls. The air feels thick, cuttable with a knife. The plumbing gargles audibly.

“Of course I’d have cared,” he breathes a few seconds later. They’ve passed like minutes.

Despite the words and Jared’s expression, Evan can’t help but laugh. It’s a choked, humourless sound. “No, you wouldn’t,” he objects, tone tight and pained. “You’re awful to me, Jared. And-and you have been for years. You’ve said a billion times you only talk to me so your parents will pay for your car insurance.”

“So?” Jared says indignantly, a frown Evan can’t quite read setting his lips and crumpling the skin on his forehead.

He doesn’t look sorry, though, he doesn’t look upset any more, and anger boils, red hot and painful, burning in Evan’s heart because although Jared has said he cared, he hasn’t denied Evan’s accusation. He’s agreed that they only talk because he needs his care insurance paid for.

Except.

Except, Evan knows that doesn’t quite add up. He could just lie to his mom, say they’ve spoken when they haven’t, he lies to his mom about enough other stuff that he wouldn’t put a thought to lying to her once more.

He knows that Jared doesn’t actually like talking to him either.

And that hurts.

And the angry, hurt part of Evan wants Jared to be hurting to.

“Well,” he retorts fiercely, voice harsh and posture defensive, hands curled into fists so tight his bitten fingernails dig into the palm of his good hand and his broken wrist throbs. “Maybe that isn’t quite true. Maybe you actually only talk to me because you don’t have any other friends.”

Jared’s mouth opens and closes but no sound comes out. Evan watches him for a second, watches the hurt and anger and confusion flicker across his face with a sickening sense of achievement because he’s hurt Jared just as Jared has hurt him.

The fact he feels almost proud of that hurts too, more than anything else, maybe, because although Evan knows he’s weird and awkward and can’t always work out what he’s meant to say in conversation, he isn’t a bad person, he doesn’t try to hurt.

Or maybe he wasn’t.

Maybe he isn’t any more.

Not that it matters, he realises. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good person or not if no one speaks to you anyway. It doesn’t matter if you’re nice or not if no one likes you enough to want to be with you in the first place.

Evan very, very suddenly seriously regrets not having found a higher tree to climb, having used a more reliable method than falling from a tree.

“Fuck you, Evan,” Jared spits, and Evan blinks himself back into the room to find Jared is still staring at him with this broken sort of expression. He says something else after, something lost to the blood rushing in Evan’s ears and the throbbing of his heart and the fact his reeling mind is much too busy telling him to run to listen.

He doesn’t hesitate to follow.

“Just leave me alone,” he strains, tone wet but surprisingly even despite the fluttering of his heart and the tremble in his limbs, and then, before Jared has time to say anything else, Evan is fleeing on shaky legs. 

He ends up in another bathroom with no memory of how he got there and falls down against the far wall, curling up on the floor with his arms wrapped around his tented knees and his spinning head pressed against them. His eyes are closed and his heart is thrumming worryingly quickly in his throat and his breaths come in the short sharp useless gasps he’s usually solve with Xanax because even breathing is much too much for his reeling, eddying brain to deal with right now.

He hadn’t meant to say what he had to Jared, but it had just sort of happened. The words had flowed honestly, unstoppable and painful and destructive as lava, and although a lot of what he had said was true, that didn’t mean it needed to be said. Jared isn’t good to him, Evan knows, he’s always teasing and taunting and putting him down and so often insists they’re just family friends, and only that so his mom will pay his car insurance, that Evan kind of believes it to be true. He’s known Jared since forever, though, and back when they were little, they had been pretty much inseparable.

As close as brothers.

Their friendship faded as they aged though, as they passed through the years of school, as Evan became weirder and quieter and Jared distanced himself for popularity’s sake, and although Jared is still one of the few people Evan truly feels comfortable to be around, they’re not close now like they were before. He kind of misses it, misses his friend, misses the boy who he would once have counted as a brother, and although he knows Jared doesn’t feel the same, he had always hoped that maybe they’d grow closer again once the pressures of High school lessened.

He’s blown that now though, he knows.

Why wouldn’t he, though, he fails at everything else, at school, at keeping his mom happy, at solving his own mental health issues, at helping Connor, at being a normal, functioning human being instead of the anxious mess he currently is.

Hell, he’s even failing at breathing at the moment.

“Hansen?”

The voice is distant, words warped, not quite real, not quite enough to draw him back from his internal self-hated spiralling. More words come, quiet compared to the racing beat in his ears and the harsh rasp of his fractured breathing, and then very suddenly, there’s a hand shaking his shoulder.

Evan flinches, hard, startled and overstimulated, and the hand vanishes again, and then someone is calling his name. No, Connor is calling his name, and that’s … that’s not really what he needs right now.

“What’s wrong?” Connor asks, demands almost, harsh tone concerned in a way that seems oh so familiar. “Why can’t you- Is it asthma? Do you have an inhaler?”

Evan finds himself shaking his head before he’s really thought about doing so. 

Connor sighs from somewhere above him, the exhale harsh and a little frustrated. “That didn’t help, Hansen. Do you mean it’s not asthma or you don’t have an inhaler?”

“It’s not-” he manages, voice a barely audible wheeze directed at his knees and he really doubts Connor would have heard it let alone understood and that’s just another failure, and then there’s a scuffling sort of sound and then Connor is talking again.

“You need to breathe,” he commands, as though Evan doesn’t already know that, as though he wouldn’t already love to be able to breathe if only his panicking mind and adrenalin filled body was capable of that. Despite his spiralling, Evan thinks he might have coughed out a wheezy swear at the stupidity of Connor’s words.

“Fuck off to you too,” Connor mutters, and Evan’s sure if he was able to open his eyes, he’d find Connor rolling his own. “But first, um, just … try to breathe with me, okay?” 

Though the humming in his ears, Evan belated realises that Connor sounds, again, unsure. He seems lost as to what to do and out of his depth, and Evan doesn’t blame him in the slightest. This is the second time Connor’s found him broken on the floor and struggling to breathe, but at least the first time it had been much more obvious what was wrong, the solution clear. It was much less intimate too in a way; anyone would be struggling to breathe if they were as unwell as he was, but only messy, failures of human beings struggle to breathe because their own brain is too busy frying itself to remember how.

Not that Connor doesn’t know how much of a mess he is already.

He knows why he was under that tree in the first place, after all.

Connor’s doing what Heidi has done for him for years though, and although his counting is a little faster and his rhythm a little off, it’s counting and breathing Evan can follow as he tries to force his spasming lungs back into a reasonable sort rhythm before the lack of oxygen renders him unconscious. He’s only passed out from a panic attack once before, back in ninth grade after he’d been asked to solve a chemistry question on the whiteboard and had instantly forgotten all of chemistry along with pretty much everything else including English and his own name. He hadn’t passed out in class thankfully, he thinks he might have died of embarrassment if he had, but rather he’d made it to the relative privacy of the bathroom to sit out the panic attack before the blackness came. He’d woken there some time later on the tiles to confused, judgemental chatter and the soft calling of his name from Mr Harrison.

It isn’t Mr Harrison who’s there now though, it’s Connor, and that really isn’t helping matters in the slightest.

Evan breathes with him though, forces his ragged wheezing to follow the slow, almost nervous counting until his heartrate slows and his lungs calm and his head stops spinning. Eventually, he comes back to himself just a little.

The bathroom is quiet save for their breathing and the gurgling of the plumbing, and the floor is hard and unforgiving, and his limbs are trembling and his khakis feel wet where his face has been pressed against them. Evan hadn’t realised he’d been crying.

It’s mortifying and Evan wonders if he could curl up small enough that Connor would stop noticing he’s there altogether.

When Evan finally looks up through teary eyes, he finds Connor has settled before him, long legs crossed and arms in his lap and his pinched expression concerned, and although it’s white tiles behind him not the blurry green that was there before, for a second Evan is back in the forest with an ache in his stomach and burning, throbbing arm and the bitter tang of iron on his tongue and with Connor beside him as he dies.

He hadn’t been able to breathe then.

He can barely breathe now.

“Sorry,” he wheezes through his phlegmy throat, “I- um-” Unable to find the words or the breath to say them, he breaks off and shakes his head instead. His whole body is trembling, muscles twitching with adrenalin and tense with anxiety, his heart stuttering in his chest, his breaths shaking with each rapid, wet, stuttered inhale. Nothing feels real, it’s too bright, too green behind the mottled window, the birds and wind too loud beneath the rushing of the blood in his ears-

“Hey no, don’t start that again!”

Evan opens eyes he doesn’t remember closing, briefly catches Connor’s alarmed, mismatched gaze before he looks down to the grimy tiles instead. He focuses on them, on the white, and on the gurgling of the plumbing and the chatter of the kids in the hallway and the gentle breathing of the boy before him. It helps, a bit, focuses his mind, grounds him.

His hand trembles as he wipes at wet eyes with his sleeve.

“Was that a … panic attack?” Connor asks, tone unsure and a little cautious and from somewhere, Evan finds the energy to nod, his head giving one weary, jerky bob.

Connor hums in acknowledgement. “Not doing so well, huh?”

Evan glares at the tiles. He almost wants to disagree, to deny he’s the broken mess he really is, but he finds he hasn’t the energy nor the reason to deny it. Connor knows he’s a mess just as Evan knows Connor is struggling equally as much if not more. He huffs a quiet, wet, bitter laugh instead and wraps his arm around his knees again in the hope that physically holding himself together will work emotionally too.

“Yeah, I get that,” Connor agrees. “My mental health is pretty much a joke too, if that makes you feel any better. Not that you don’t know that already but …,” Connor breaks off and shrugs, and then rather abruptly starts speaking again. Evan wonders if he’d realised that maybe that wasn’t a particularly helpful topic of conversation. Wonders if he’d noticed the wet, forceful swallow of bile that came with the memories it brought.

“Do you have ugh, meds or anything to take?”

Evan shrugs, shoulders twitching jerkily, unable to find the energy to explain that yes, he is prescribed medication for this very occurrence alongside the ones he’s meant to take routinely on a daily basis but he can’t because he spilt them all over the floor of a different yet identical bathroom little over a week ago when panicking that Connor was about to do something very, very stupid and is yet to replenish his supply.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Connor’s tone isn’t harsh exactly, but it’s not all that soft. It isn’t like it was before in the forest and that’s… that’s actually a good thing, Evan decides. Connor isn’t treating him like he’s breakable, and Evan guesses that’s because maybe he kind of understands. Not the panic attack side of things, probably, but the other parts, and that being treated like you’re fragile and broken and useless doesn’t help at all.

“Hansen?”

“I- I don’t have any with me.” It comes out wetly, and his voice cracks a little. “I dropped them. Last week, and I never- um, I forgot.”

“Oh, that’s crap.”

Evan hums in reply and rests his head back against the wall. It is kind of crap, but, well, most people can remember how to breathe without having to drug their mind into numbness first. Most people can order pizza for dinner, too, and talk on the phone without writing down everything they need to say first and have a conversation without feeling sick with worry about saying something they shouldn’t have and deciding the answer to that is to just not say anything at all.

A bell rings loudly in the hallway. Evan flinches at the sudden sound. Connor doesn’t laugh.

Connor’s good like that. Connor’s good in general if you give him a chance.

“We’re late for class,” Evan wheezes, trying not to sound like his heart is once again thrumming in his throat, and what he actually means is Connor is late for class because Evan’s done for the day, he thinks, he’s exhausted both mentally and physically and still shaking pretty uncontrollably and his breathing is just barely back in a rhythm that might be considered normal. There’s a headache playing in his temples too, one born of crying and stress and too little sleep.

He just wants to go home.

Connor on the other hand … Connor could go to class, he _should_ go to class, he’s missed enough lessons as it is, and Evan doesn’t want to be the reason he misses any more.

He’s got enough to feel guilty about as it is. 

Connor frowns, eyebrows furrowing in confusion over his mismatched eyes.

“You’re not thinking of going, are you?”

Evan gives another small headshake and Connor looks possibly a little relieved.

“I’ll give you a lift.”

“What?”

“I’ll take you home. That’s where you’re going, right? It’s definitely where you should be going- unless you need-”

“You have class?” Evan interrupts, because although that does sound oh so awfully tempting, Connor has class and Evan can’t be the one responsible for making him skive. “I don’t want to, um- you should go to class.”

“Seriously, Hansen?” Connor scoffs. “I don’t need a reason to cut class. Cutting class is like, what I do best. I’ve been in like three days this year.”

Evan shakes his head, rolling it against the wall. “You shouldn’t- you can’t cut class because of me,” he argues wheezily, because although it is true that Connor has missed an awful lot of school for reasons only known to him, it feels like it would be very different if he skipped more lessons because of Evan.

Connor’s expression softens a little in understanding. “Okay, so I’m cutting whatever,” he says firmly, “It’s up to you if you want to come too or not.”

“I-” Evan breaks off and sighs, protests dying on his tongue half because he’s too tired to argue further and half because he isn’t all that sure how he would get home otherwise; he can’t call Heidi and hasn’t the energy to walk and the bus … he almost shudders at the thought. He sighs instead; his willpower isn’t strong enough for this argument. Connor seems to sense it as he shuffles on the floor as though getting ready to stand before thinking better of it.

“Can you walk? Or do you like need a minute?”

“No, I’m- I’ll be okay.”

“Seriously, do you want a minute?”

Evan considers the question this time, then shakes his head. He pushes himself from the floor before Connor can say another word and numbly walks on shaky legs to the sink to splash his too hot face with water. In the mirror above the sink, he finds his reflection, finds swollen, red rimmed hazel eyes set in a blotchy, too pale face.

He looks a mess.

No, scrap that; he is a mess.


	12. A road trip of sorts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand a second chapter. Enjoy

Connor leads him silently through the mercifully empty hallways and out the front door and then to the junior parking lot where a familiar blue car is parked. It unlocks with a click of a button, orange blinkers flashing brightly in the otherwise dreary day and Evan follows his encouragements and climbs inside.

At some point, they start moving, winding quickly though the parked cars to the gentle purr of the engine. The car moves smoothly despite the speed, though, and pulls out onto the main road with more care than Evan thought it would. He isn’t sure why he’s surprised Connor used the blinkers and waited for a sensible gap in the stream of traffic passing the school gates to pull out onto the main road, but he kind of is.

Connor glances over just as they’re pulling onto the road that leads to the cheaper side of town. “You live near that park, right?”

Evan starts from his thoughts a little. “Y-yeah. Just down- um, there’s a shop, near the shop,” he stutters quietly, voice still chocked and a little wheezy.

“Okay.” There’s a moment of quiet save for the rumble of the road beneath the car and the ticking of the indicators as Connor drives and then, “Here.” 

Evan looks up from the cast he’s been picking at with shaking fingers as he concentrated on breathing in a rhythm that was normal and quiet and didn’t make him seem like he was still fractions of an inch away from crumbling completely, to find Connor offering him his phone. It’s an iPhone, large and new and expensive looking and cradled in a plain black case. The screen of it is cracked, though, and the bezels dented beneath the battered case as though it has been thrown at a wall a few too many times.

He accepts it gingerly, expecting Connor to tell him to put it in the glove compartment or maybe put his address into google maps except he doesn’t.

“Codes 2266, Spotify’s on the top of the second page,” he says instead. There’s a pause, and then, almost cautiously, “Unless the quiet it better. For you?”

Evan shakes his head. He would have done so even if quiet would have been better, he knows, but in this case, he isn’t lying. The music might help a bit, if anything, give him something to focus on other than his breathing, something to think about other than Jared and Connor and his own failing mental health and the fact that Connor has found him a broken mess on the floor for the second time in less than a month.

That Connor has kind of saved him for the second time in less than a month. Well, not saved exactly, he didn’t need saving but … well. 

“What should I put on?” he forces himself to ask, voice sounding too loud and to wheezed and too wrong as he tries with shaking hands to unlock Connor’s phone for a third time. The lock screen eventually clears, the photo vanishing before he’s actually registered what it was, and he manages to open Spotify on his first attempt which a pretty big success at this point.

“You pick.”

“No, I- I can’t. I don’t- um-” Evan breaks off, stopping his babbled explanation that he can’t pick because he just can’t deal with the thought of people judging his taste in music before he can really start. “You pick, please.”

Connor looks at him through his mattered hair, glancing momentarily away from the road, and then shrugs.

“Ugh, go on playlists, there’s one called ‘Carrots’.”

“Carrots?”

“Yeah.”

“Um, why?” Evan asks as he finds the playlist, sets it playing with an unsteady prod. The song that starts through the stereo is momentarily much too loud and he recoils into his seat. Connor doesn’t flinch, or laugh, but rather glares at the stereo and turns down the volume until the song is more background music than party level of loud. It isn’t one Evan thinks he recognises, but his thoughts are such a mess he isn’t sure he would recognise it if it had been played to him 100 times before.

Connor seems less of a mess. “Why not?” he says, and Evan, after a good few seconds of trying to work out what he’s referring to, the playlist name, ‘Carrots’, and guesses that’s a valid point.

The music does help, a little, maybe. It gives him something else to focus on other than breathing and not having a panic attack and the fact he’s not doing do well at either anyway, so it’s certainly better than silence. 

“Should you have signed out?” Connor asks with a frown as they pull up at a set of lights. “Like, my attendance is already shitty but that’s probably the sort of thing you care about.”

Evan’s suddenly wide eyes shoot up from the phone and his sweaty hands grasp at the hem of his shirt in sudden distress as he realises he definitely should have done just that. 

“Oh God,” he mutters wheezily, chest again tight and breaths catching in his throat in panic because although he’s allowed to leave school if he needs to, he’s sure they’re still going to call his mom if he just goes missing and then she’ll worry where he is and if he’s okay, and sure, he could text her and let her know he’s not feeling well and has headed home but she told him not to get the bus home if that happened, told him to wait for her there and he hasn’t done that. He hasn’t done that at all. He doesn’t want her to come and pick him up either because she’s meant to be at work and she’s missed so much work for him recently and he really, really doesn’t want her to miss any more because then they’ll start thinking she isn’t dedicated, isn’t a team player, and he knows there’s budget cuts and then she might end up losing her job and-

“Fucking Hell, Hansen. Chill. We can go back if you want?”

Evan shakes his head aggressively enough that the ache inside throbs in time with each rotation at the thought of Connor putting himself out even more than he already has.

“N-no, we don’t- you don’t need to,” he argues hastily, “you don’t, um, we’ve already left and, um-”

“Jesus Christ, calm down! You’re making me exhausted just listening to you.”

Evan flinches at the suddenly irritated tone. “S-sorry,” he half yelps, half chokes, “I didn’t- I, um, I’m sorry, I just, I stutter and ramble and- and I’m st-still doing it so I’m going to shut up now sorry.”

Connor rolls his eyes at the apology and then, after an almost tense moment, sighs and glances in the rear-view mirror and then pulls the car to a stop beside the curb. He puts it into park, and then turns in his seat. The look he fixes Evan with is a frown he can’t quite read. “Hansen, do you want to go back?”

Evan shies away, wide eyes finding his lap rather than holding Connor’s intense gaze. He watches his shaking hands ruin his hem as he takes a moment to actually consider what it is he’s being asked. “I-I don’t think they’ll notice I’m gone, actually,” he admits after a moment. “They didn’t before, when I- um, when I- that- that day in the forest. And um, well, they said I can go if I’m not feeling well, anyway, because of um ...” he trails off and twitches his casted arm even though it isn’t really his arm that he’s referring to, more the accident in general, but Connor seems to get the message because he nods and says okay.

Evan mutters another quiet sorry, and if wasn’t stuck looking at his lap, he reckons he might have seen Connor rolling his eyes. He doesn’t say anything else though, and after another heavy moment, he puts the car back into drive, signals, checks his mirrors, and then pulls back out into the flow of traffic.

A minute passes almost tensely, the car quiet beside the music, and then Connor speaks. His sharp tone is softer again, concerned and unsure again in a way that completely contradicts the opinion most people have on him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Evan swallows. His hands still their relentless restlessness “A-about?” he asks cautiously.

“The bathroom?”

“Oh,” he breathes, posture deflating a little again in relief because Connor’s question could have been going in a whole host of other directions that he wouldn’t have wanted it to go in. “No- no it’s, um, it’s nothing, it’s just- I had a fight. With Jared. He- I yelled at him. I told him to leave me alone.”

“Good.”

“What?”

“He’s a dick to you. You’re better off without him,” Connor tells him, and Evan thinks it maybe might be meant to be comforting. He hums quietly in reply, wanting to argue but lacking both the heart and the energy, and then after a second, leans his head against his hand, the elbow propped up on the windowsill.

Connor says nothing more either and the car falls back silent save for the stereo. The warm, sweet smelling air is lighter than it was before, the atmosphere no longer awkward. Out of the corner of his eye, Evan notices that the irritated tension has leaked from Connor’s posture again. His shoulders are slack, and the irritation has faded from his expression. It’s no longer set and angry. He looks almost comfortable, more like the Connor Evan had sat with under a tree in the park near his house the Friday before the start of school. It’s almost nice.

The song plays out, and then another, a more upbeat tune Evan still doesn’t recognise but Connor seems to be enjoying judging by the rhyme tapping of his index finger against the steering wheel and the small smile playing on his lips. He mutters lines of lyrics sometimes too, his quiet tone almost self-conscious at first but merging into something that’s almost theatrical as the song progresses.

Evan kind of wonders if it’s a little for his benefit as he’s sure Connor noticed the tired amusement that had crept onto his lips after the first quietly sung line, and that’s … kind of sweet, maybe. He rests his head back against his seat and listens to the song and the occasional live additions and realises that breathing is no longer quite the effort it only recently was.

Eventually, the song fades and stops and then another takes its place. The tune of this one isn’t one he recognises either, but Connor seems to as he huffs a laugh that seems more than a little humourless.

“Skip this one.”

“Why?” Evan prods at skip with a shaking forefinger as he asks but ends up hitting pause instead. The phone shakes in his clumsy hands as he tries to correct his mistake and ends up slipping from his sweaty fingers and falling into the footwell with a dull thud. It seems very loud in the suddenly quiet car.

So does his heart.

So does his breathing if he thinks about it. He knows he shouldn’t. He’ll forget how again if he does.

“Sorry, I’m ugh- Sorry,” he stutters as he fumbles to retrieve the phone from where it has ended up wedged between his backpack and the side of the footwell. He checks it for damage once he’s holding it again and then realises there is very little he could do to put the phone in any worse condition than it’s already in.

“Sorry,” he mutters again, and Connor glances over to frown at him. His gaze lingers for longer than it should considering he’s driving. 

“You’re still shaking.”

Evan looks down at his trebling hands, the fingers of the left curled into a fist as he tries to still them and the right twitching as they rub at his cast through the soft fabric of the hoodie. The arm inside it throbs a little more angrily than normal and he wonders if he knocked it retrieving the phone, he might have done, he can’t remember, or if the fractured bones are just not enjoying the almost violent tremors that plague his clammy hands. 

“I know,” he finds himself admitting.

“Is that normal?”

A beat passes. “Kind of.”

Connor looks at him with calculating, mismatched eyes.

“When did you last eat?”

“Um.” Evan’s gaze finds his cast again, twitchy fingers scratch at the skin just above it through the acquired hoodie. Dinner on Monday, was the last time he had a proper meal, and he’s snacked a bit since, nibbled lacklusterly at pop-tarts for dinner on Tuesday and picked at a handful of dry cereal when he got home from school yesterday but … yeah, he does understand that his hands might not just be shaking due to anxiety and the dissipating adrenaline of the panic attack.

Heidi would be so disappointed in him if she wasn’t too busy working and at school to notice his frankly shitty eating habits.

“Hansen?” Connor prompts in a tone that sounds almost disapproving which is rich coming from someone who has much worse habits than skipping a few meals.

“Drop it,” Evan snaps quietly, tone defensive beneath the trembling, and stabs at the play button on the screen of Connor’s phone with more force than it needs. Adam’s Song starts up again.

Evan leaves it on out of protest.

It turns out to be about suicide and he wonders for who’s benefit it was that Connor wanted it off. 

Connor says nothing as the song plays out and his mismatched eyes stay focused on the road, his expression unreadable, and then, when the track changes, he glances over.

Evan almost thinks he’s about to start a conversation he 100 % is not in the right headspace to handle.

“I wasn’t judging,” Connor says instead, tone sincere over the cheery intro of Mr Brightside and Evan, relieved and a little caught out, nods.

“No, I know,” he mutters. A moment passes and a thought arrives. “Maybe it would have been okay if you were, though. It’s not like it’s normal to not- um- have dinner but it’s not like I- I’m not trying- it’s just-” he breaks off and swallows, clenches his restless hands into fists as he tries to find the words for what it is he’s trying to say. “It seems a lot more effort than it’s worth, sometimes. Finding food.”

Connor gives him a look. It isn’t a happy one, but one that makes Evan think he might know the feeling too.

“I don’t- I know I shouldn’t- Mom worries if I don’t eat and she doesn’t need anything more to worry about. She’s always stressing and worried and trying to look as though she isn’t, but she is because- because I’m a lot for her to deal with, I think. Not- not like- I don’t get into trouble, but I’m- I struggle, with well… I have really bad anxiety,” he explains, as though he needs to.

“It’s like- like I can’t even order pizza because then I have to pay for pizza and I have to stand where while it’s awkward and silent and they’re counting the change and I can’t make phone calls without having to write it all out and rehearse it all first and some days I can’t even go to the grocery store because I just- I just can’t-” Evan breaks off, takes a breath and curls his shaking hands into tight fists. His left wrist protests. He doesn’t care.

He somehow doesn’t really care he’s suddenly spilling all of this to Connor either.

“I’m just- I’m such a burden for- for her. She doesn’t deserve to have to work all the time to pay for meds and therapy that don’t even work for someone who’s so broken they can’t even open the door to collect a pizza,” he explains brokenly, voice suddenly tight and cracking. “She doesn’t deserve to be burdened with a mess like me.”

For a moment Connor doesn’t reply. Too loud, too cheery music fills the silence.

“I’d tell you you’re wrong if I thought it would help,” he says, tone level and steady and surprisingly honest, “but that isn’t how mental health works, is it?”

“That’s not …” Evan trails off. His fingers find his mouth, teeth biting at his nails as a futile outlet for his restless, anxious energy as he avoids Connor’s gaze because Connor is so, so wrong to suggest this is just Evan’s head playing with him. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between what is real and what his anxiety is telling him, he’ll admit, like when it says people are staring and judging as he buys groceries or waits for change and he knows logically it isn’t true even if that isn’t what his brain is telling him, but this isn’t one of those times. It isn’t at all.

Connor is silent for a long moment, the emptiness filled with the rumble of the road and the soft music of the Killers as Brandon Flowers sings about being on the verge of a breakdown and the too loud clacking of Evan’s teeth as he shakily ruins the nails on the fingers sticking out of his cast. One tears and he grimaces at the sting and the iron tang on his tongue.

“We should get McDonalds.”

Evan blinks at the sudden statement, looks up from his bleeding finger. “McDonalds?”

“Yep.” Connor pops the ‘p’. “I’m hungry and mom’s cooking this shitty gluten free vegan lasagne for dinner and you’re shaking, so …” he shrugs as though the solution is obvious.

And Evan would admit it kind of is because he does actually have money in his pocket today, a $20 bill his mom left on the kitchen counter days before, and he would quite like to go even if was just to order a cola in hope the excessive sugar it contained would solve his shakes, except. Except he’s an anxious mess of a person who can’t speak to people who aren’t his mom or Jared or Connor, apparently, without becoming a stuttering wreck on a good day and today is not a good day at all. Today he nearly hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness on the grimy tiles of the boys’ bathroom in the English block.

“I-”

“I’m ordering,” Connor interrupts his tone confident and so much kinder than Evan deserves. “And we’ll eat in the car.”

Evan finds a small, tired smile involuntarily playing on his chapped lips. “Okay.”

As promised, Connor goes for food whilst Evan sits in the car and worries his nails. It hurts, stings when the skin tears, and he ends up with tissue wrapped around a particularly bloody cuticle, but ruined fingers are at least less permanent than ruined fiberglass casts splinting ruined limbs.

As promised, Connor comes back with a medium portion of fries and a coke for Evan and a quarter pounder and a chocolate milkshake for himself. He brings McFlurrys too, one Oreo and one M&M and explains he bought one of each because he didn’t know which Evan preferred and he’d eat either.

As promised, they eat in the car. Not at McDonalds, but rather beside the park where they had sat together beneath the sweet chestnut a few days before the start of school. It was less than two weeks ago, but it feels like a lifetime.

Evan finds himself saying so. Connor agrees.

The park was full then, of families and couples and groups of kids and people alone but content, all enjoying the last of the summer sun before autumn came. 

Autumn has come now. Rather suddenly so. Last week was scorching, the sun bright and unhidden in the cloudless blue sky and the air still and warm. It had been too hot, too hot for wearing just a t-shirt let alone a borrowed hoodie too to cover the large letters of the name scrawled over pristine fiberglass in bold black Sharpie.

The weather is cooler now, blessedly so, and the sky grey and mottled with clouds, the sun reduced to a dim, off-white glow to the south. It’s raining too, not quite enough to be considered actual rain, but just enough to leave the air filled with a fine drizzle and the clothes of anyone without a coat miserably damp.

Despite the autumn weather, the dusty rain smells of summer and dry, parched earth.

Inside the car it’s dry and warm and smells of lemon and lavender and vaguely of fries. It’s quiet too, silent save for the shuffling tracks of Connor’s playlist and the scratching of chips and straws and then of plastic spoons against the bottom of paper cups full of ice-cream, and almost a little uncomfortable. Or, well, not quite uncomfortable, exactly, there’s no tension in the fast-food scented air, but there is something. Like there’s an elephant in the room which neither of them are yet to mention but one day will have to discuss because you can’t just live with an elephant, they’re too big, and overpowering, and it might seem okay at first, might be bearable for a little while, but it isn’t something that will be okay forever. It’s something that will have to be dealt with eventually.

“Why are you doing this?” Evan asks, tone weird and wrong and pitched just a little too high. He prods at his melting McFlurry with a plastic spoon held in twitch fingers. They’re at least back to normal levels of twitchy now though, no longer shaking uncontrollably as his body struggles for energy, but now just restless and unsteady and unpleasantly clammy as they always are when he’s anxious, which is almost always so he’s kind of used to that level of twitchy by now. 

Connor looks up from his own dessert, his spoon paused in the ice-cream. “Doing what?”

Evan indicates around them at the picknick they’re eating in Connor’s car for what he’s sure is almost entirely for his own benefit and at the situation in general. “You said we weren’t friends.”

“We’re not.”

Evan wonders just how much of the sting of that is readable on his expression because Connor grimaces a little at his McFlurry. “I told you before, you wouldn’t want me as a friend.”

“You don’t know that?”

Connor huffs a bitter laugh.

“I have anger issues. I shout and yell. I lash out. I hurt people. You know that.”

Evan’s fingers find his cast through his sleeve and tries not to remember the crack it had made as it hit the lino of the hallway. Tries not to remember the bolt of pain it had brought.

Connor very briefly looks a little guilty before his expression merges back to something harder.

“You told Kleinman you fell,” he says. 

“Ugh-,” Evan tries to make sense of the topic change. “What was I meant to say?”

Connor gives him a look and then shrugs.

Evan sighs and gives his melting ice-cream a stir.

“Did you … ever tell anyone what happened?” he asks quietly a moment later. There’s more curiosity than he would like lilts his tone considering the topic. He shouldn’t be sounding interested about whether Connor has sought any help for attempting to take his own life because that really shouldn’t be optional, because someone needs to know so he can get help and-

But Evan can’t exactly force him to tell when he himself hasn’t.

He can hope though, hope and ask even though he’s 99 % sure that Connor won’t ever tell another soul what he has tried to do. Evan tries not to pale as his brain helpfully informs him that it’s a piece of information that Connor definitely intends to take to his grave. 

Connor, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care, which seems odd. He glances over, expression more indifferent to the question than Evan had expected him to and finishes his mouthful of ice-cream.

“I had an argument with dad about it,” he explains once his mouth is empty. “He didn’t seem very impressed when I arrive home late for lunch and sticking of weed and covered with blood. And I kind of yelled at him, I-”

“I meant with you,” Evan interrupts quietly, weakly, now entirely understanding why Connor had seemed so indifferent to his question before. 

Across the car, the sound of Connor’s plastic spoon scraping across his paper cup pauses. 

“Oh. No.”

“I- I think you should,” he says cautiously, voice so small and eyes fixed on the McFlurry he no longer has an appetite for because looking at that is much more appealing than looking Connor in the eye.

Connor scoffs.

“That’s fucking rich,” he mutters, tone suddenly tight. Evan would bet his posture is tight again too if he looked over, his shoulders hunched and defensive.

Evan’s own are raised a little at Connor’s tone, too. He finds an apology on his lips, stuttered and quiet. When no reply comes, he glances over to find Connor’s expression is set as he somewhat aggressively spoons another bite of McFlurry into his mouth. 

“Connor …”

“Fuck off.”

“Sorry,” Evan whispers, eyes on his lap, on the icecream Connor bought him that is rested there. It’s cold against his fingers and thigh, damp from condensation soaking into his khakis, and Evan tries to focus on that, tries to ground himself in the sensations rather than let himself spiral off again. He focuses on sounds too, on the hum of music still coming from Connor’s playlist, on the brush of fabric as his leg jiggles anxiously, on the soft clicking sound his nails make as the pluck at the loose threads of his cast.

The lingering scent of fries hangs in the air, mixing with the lavender and lemon of the air freshener dangling from the sun visor, the tastes of cola and ice-cream play on his tongue, and out the windscreen, the orange-shedding trees in the park dance in the damp September breeze.

Evan watches them in silence, focuses on them rather than breathing or the weight of the cast on his arm or the angry, struggling boy who sits beside him. 

It takes him a lot longer than it should do understand that Connor has told him to fuck off and he has very decidedly not fucked off at all.

“Shit, s-sorry, did you want me to go?” Evan asks, already starting to pull his bag onto his lap with his good hand in preparation. He’s just trying to work out how to open the car door, hold his bag, and not spill his mostly molten gifted ice-cream all with one properly functioning arm when Connor sighs. 

“Why did you jump out of a tree?” he asks almost curiously. His words are suddenly soft again, his tone no longer hard with anger but Evan flinches anyway. His backpack falls to the floor again with a thud.

“I- I didn’t,” he manages to mutter, eyes flicking up to catch Connor’s before rapidly retreating back to his lap and the suddenly shaking hands that rest there.

Connor gives him a withering look. “Liar.”

“I’ve said why,” Evan mutters softly, voice small.

“No, I meant why a tree. They’re not like, that tall, you know.”

“Oh, I see.” Evan looks away, eyes distant on the trees in the park. Connor doesn’t pry, just waits, expression a little curious but eyes again on his melting icecream. For a short while, the only sounds in the car is the soft song on the stereo and the barely audible scraping of Connor’s spoon against the cardboard tub.

Evan prods at his own mostly liquid dessert a few more times before giving it a grimace at returning it to the cup holder between the two seats. He hasn’t really the appetite for it anymore anyway. If he’s honest, he feels even more nauseous than what is now normal for him, and he isn’t all that sure whether it’s because of the direction the conversation has suddenly taken or if his stomach is just unimpressed with the sudden influx of sugar and cream after being mostly empty for the past few days.

It isn’t normal that he hasn’t really eaten in days, he knows.

He isn’t normal either though, so that kind of makes sense.

He considers that as he sits there staring at hands that are restless to fiddle but are currently void. They’ll find something soon, he knows, whether it be his cast or his shirt or his own nails or cuticles, they always find something to destroy.

“I climb trees a lot,” he finds himself saying eventually, “Like- like I know it’s silly because I’m not a little kid anymore, but it- it was nice up them, peaceful. Like there wasn’t any pressure when I was up there, just me a-and nature and so I never had to worry when I was up there, not- not about people anyway, not about them judging because I’d stuttered or done something weird or stupid or awkward because there was no one else there. I could just, I don’t know, be me, I guess.

“Anyway, I used to eat my lunch up that tree at work- like I did it every day, but then- then that day I just- I don’t know, I was- It wasn’t a good day, and I just, I just kept climbing even when I knew the branches were getting too thin. And then when I got to the last branch I knew wouldn’t snap, I stopped, and I sat there and the ground was so far away but like, it wasn’t scary, I wasn’t afraid. I knew I was tempting fate but like … that didn’t feel like it mattered. Because it didn’t feel like I mattered.”

“So you let go.”

Evan’s gaze flickers up from his hands to find Connor watching him with an expression he can’t entirely read. Their eyes catch briefly before Evan returns to shakily destroying a paper napkin he doesn’t remember picking up. 

He shakes his head. “No, that’s not- that isn’t what happened. The branch broke, it really- it cracked and I should have moved but I didn’t and then it just gave way, and I was falling except- except I caught the branch below. And I was just hanging there like- 30 feet above the earth, looking down through the branches and I just thought- I wondered why I was holding on. Why- what was the point when I was just a useless, broken burden with no one who would care if I fell. No one to even notice. And so- so I didn’t.”

“You let go.”

Evan nods, swallows heavily. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Connor says after a minute. He sound like he understands, which Evan knows he does, but also kind of defeated, too, like all the energy has been sucked from his words by Evan’s explanation.

Evan’s hands pause on the napkin, their destruction halted as his attention goes to trying to decode Connors words instead, trying to work out what it is he’s apologising for, weather he’s sorry about asking, or for what happened, or just sad that Evan feels that way too. There’s also the chance that he’s apologising for being the one who effectively caused his impromptu attempt at taking his own life to fail.

Evan isn’t all that sure he likes that idea and a troubled frown finds his brow at the thought.

“For- for what?” he asks quietly, voice fragile, tentative, not all that sure he wants to know. 

Connor shrugs wearily.

The car falls kind of silent again.

Evan knows he ought to say something, to start conversation, to ask how Connor is after all of this conversation about himself, but he really doesn’t know how to find the words. He also kind of knows that Connor wouldn’t want that anyway. Connor hasn’t said all that much about himself since that first day in the park when he spilled all his hurts and worries to a boy who he thought either wouldn’t remember what he said or wouldn’t be alive to tell.

Evan does remember though. And he is alive.

He can’t tell, though, because Connor hasn’t told and because he’s pretty sure that Connor would hate him if he did and he really doesn’t want Connor to hate him. Connor isn’t his friend, he knows, but he at least knows Evan exists and seems content to spend time with him and that’s more than Evan has from anyone else at the moment. He’s trying to help too and that’s

“It’s kind of shit, you know?

Evan glances up from his restless fingers at the unexpected question to finds Connor looking at with this curious sort of expression. He isn’t all that sure what he’s asking.

“What is?”

“The tree thing.”

Evan grimaces at his lap and the shredded napkin still clutched in his sweaty, twitchy fingers, but then Connor is talking again.

“Like, you know how you’re not to get drunk on something you actually like? Wait no, why the fuck would you know that. You’re not meant to anyway, because you’ll ruin it for yourself if you make yourself ill. It’s kind of like that.”

“Are you- are you compare-comparing su-su … Are you comparing _it_ to ge-getting drunk?”

Evan glances up to find Connor’s brows are a little raised.

“Have you climbed a tree since?” he asks kind of pointedly.

Evan huffs at his knees.

“It’s not like I’ve had much chance, is it?” He doesn’t need to stop scowling at his lap to know Connor has brows raised over his mismatched eyes at his tone. Snapping hadn’t exactly been intentional, he hadn’t meant to lash out, but a sudden upset anger had sparked into life itself at Connor’s words because he has a feeling, that just maybe, Connor could be right. He hasn’t climbed a tree since and although he can put that down to the messily broken am and the fact he’s meant to be avoiding activity because of his kidney, he isn’t all that sure he would have tried even if he’d been able.

No, he knows he wouldn’t have.

Not quite for the reason Connor had reasoned, though.

“I don’t know if I could, anymore,” Evan finds himself admitting eventually, voice small and directed at his knees. “I’m not sure- I didn’t plan- it wasn’t- um, the first time, so…”

“You don’t trust yourself not to try again,” Connor says, hitting the nail on the head this time, and Evan shrugs jerkily in response because although Connor is right, saying yes makes him seem like he’s in an even worse place mentally than Connor already knows he is. 

“M-maybe, I don’t- I don’t know.”

Connor seems to consider something for a moment. “Do you think you would?”

“No, probably not,” Evan sighs, which he thinks it probably true. “You- you said yourself it’s a shitty way of- of trying.” There’s also the matter of the fact it didn’t work the first time; he ended up annoyingly alive and stuck draining his mom’s money in a hospital bed instead.

Through the rain splattered windscreen, the trees in the park play in the breeze, their orange leaves almost calling to him in a way they haven’t in weeks because until Connor had pointed it out, Evan hadn’t really considered that the reason he hadn’t climbed one since his fall wasn’t only physical. The new knowledge hangs heavy in his heart. The idea that he might have lost a little of himself that day enough though he didn’t die brings a sudden, almost overwhelming wave of sadness.

He knows he can’t really mourn the part of him he thinks he might have lost though.

It was him who did the damage anyway.

“I’d offer to climb one with you,” Connor says from across the car, and Evan wonders if his longing for the trees and that part of himself had been quite so obvious, “but it’s raining and that looks like it still hurts.”

Evan shrugs, forces his eyes back from the park and drops them to the cast he’s sure Connor had been indicating. “I’m um- it shouldn’t still hurt, I think- I think I might be imagining it, so …” he finds himself trailing off, his argument falling through because although he’s sure the near constant pain isn’t real, he knows for sure the limply curling fingers that stick out of his cast are definitely not strong enough to hold his weight even if he wanted them to be. Even if Connor wants them to be, because apparently, Connor wants to help him climb a tree. Evan doesn’t entirely understand that either. “Connor, why are you trying to fix me?”

Connor draws his eyes away from the trees outside and glances over. There’s a wry sort of smile on his thin lips. “I could ask you the same question.”

“Because you’re not a bad person. I-I know you think you are and- and I know a lot of other people think you are, but I know you’re not.”

“That’d fucking bullshit and you know it,” Connor mutters and rolls his eyes away. 

Evan stares at him for a moment, words on his tongue but doubt in his mind. For once, he chooses not to listen to his anxiety.

“You- you know when you said you’d tell me I was wrong but there wasn’t any point because that’s not how mental illness works?” he asks, timidly, nervously, his hands shredding his napkin as he talks, “Well, I- um, I think- I think this is one of those times.”

Connor huffs out a humourless laugh and stabs aggressively at the remains of his McFlurry. “This isn’t one of those times, Hansen.”

“No, but, well- it kind of is,” Evan says, and despite the fact he’s still twitchily shredding a napkin, he thinks there might be more confidence to his stuttering than that has been for a while simply because he isn’t normally so sure about anything he says. “Like, I know you do- do stuff that isn’t good. I’ve heard Zoe in the corridor, and she- she said you were a psychopath, that day you pushed me over? The first day of school? But- um, you’re not. A psychopath. You’re- psychopaths don’t care when other people are hurting, and you- you do. You, um- you get angry, I know. You throw printers and push people and smoke d-drugs and Zoe- But you’re not a psychopath. Or- or a bad person. You’re just- just a good person who does not- not so good things.”

“How the fuck would you know?” Connor almost spits. He seems restless and uncomfortable, his shoulders curled defensively and his knees jittering uncomfortably below the steering column. His hands are twitching and uncoordinated in their haste as he deposits the mostly eaten ice-cream tub in the drink holder of the door.

“Because I’ve seen that side of you,” Evan argues softly. “Because you saved my life.”

Connor freezes his restlessness, looks over and holds Evan’s eyes for a long, hard moment. Eventually, he sighs roughly.

“I’m some sort of tragic hero, Hansen,” he protests, voice heavy, despondent. “And I’m not fucking worth your time.”

Evan opens his mouth to argue but Connor has already looked away to turn the key in the ignition. The engine starts as easily as the conversation died, and then with a flick of Connor’s thumb on the steering wheel, it’s purr is lost behind the too loud wall of rock music.

Evan takes his gaze back to his lap, stares at the hands and shredding of paper that rest there and tries not to regret what he had summoned the courage to say. He shouldn’t regret it. He shouldn’t, but he does.

How can he not when what he had said had ruined what had been a decent afternoon, when beside the too loud music and the rumble of the road and the occasional direction, the car is now silent and awkward and tense.

He doesn’t even try to make conversation to fix what he had broken as a decidedly pissed off, upset Connor drives him home to his waiting empty house.


	13. Not a Normal Day

Connor doesn’t go to school on Friday.

It isn’t an entirely unexpected turn of events, Evan knows his attendance could be described as patchy at best, but it is one Evan still finds a little concerning. He spends most of his time between class keeping an eye out for him in the corridors, and most of his time in class worrying about all the things his rioting, anxious brain won’t stop reminding him of, and it’s all awfully exhausting.

Evan finds out for sure Connor isn’t at school just before lunch when he overhears Alana Beck asking Zoe where he is in the corridor, and although he’s well aware eavesdropping is rude, he’s curious and worried enough that he kind of ends up doing so anyway. 

He stands at his locker, fiddling inconspicuously with the meagre belongings inside, and tries not to look like he’s listening as he strains his ears in an attempt to overhear their conversation.

It isn’t exactly much of a conversation, Alana isn’t exactly doing much talking, but Zoe is, and Evan listens to her as she rants about her evening. She’s pissed off, it turns out, because she’s had to live through yet another evening of her dad yelling at Connor and Connor yelling back whilst her mom tried to placate the air between them. It hadn’t worked, it turned out, and Connor had eventually stormed out leaving behind a furious Larry and an upset Cynthia. They had argued too, over Connor and the fact he was then missing and the fact that Larry didn’t seem to care in the slightest.

Zoe, by the sounds of it, didn’t really care either. Why would she when all he did was made her home life a living hell?

Connor had returned eventually, though, at around three am, and after a little more yelling and the slamming of a door with enough force that rippled rings formed in the glass of water beside Zoe’s bed, their house had finally settled down for the night.

Evan learns, as he stands there pretending he’s not eavesdropping when in reality he is, that while that’s not a representation of every night in the Murphy household, it’s still the sort of evening that happens much more frequently than it should. They argue a lot there. Or Larry and Connor do anyway, but Evan has kind of had that impression since that day in Ellison state park.

It’s as he’s sorting his spent pens from his half empty pencil case that he finds out the source of that particular argument, though, and he what he learns brings tightness to his chest and sends his stomach clenching because rather unexpectedly, their argument that night had been entirely his fault.

It hadn’t been anything he had done on purpose that caused the argument, not really, but also the argument and the shouting and Connor running away would never have happened without his input, because, as it turns out, it hadn’t been Connor’s car he had left school in the day before. It had been Zoe’s, and although Connor is allowed to drive it, he’s insured and has the spare key on his barren set, he shouldn’t have taken it without her permission, and he shouldn’t have skived school in it, and he certainly shouldn’t have left Zoe and Alana at school without a ride home.

Evan ends up hiding in the toilets for most of his lunch break, sat on the closed lid in a locked cubical as he frets over the trouble he’s caused and the trouble he’s got into and tries his best to remember how to breathe which is really, really ironic because him having a panic attack in the toilets was exactly what got Connor into trouble in the first place. He and his lack of ability to act like any normal human and remember how to breathe. He shouldn’t have gone with Connor, he should have walked home or got the bus and then maybe Connor wouldn’t have skived, maybe he would have gone to class like he should have done.

He should have noticed that it wasn’t Connor’s car they went in, too, shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in his own spiralling thoughts that he hadn’t really considered that the car was in the junior parking lot, hadn’t thought about how clean and shiny it was, how it looked like the owner cared for it or paid someone else to, how it smelt of lemon and lavender instead of weed and cigarettes, how Connor has slid the seat back, the bracket clicking as he adjusted it so his long, lanky legs could fit beneath the dashboard.

Evan hadn’t noticed those things though, and so he hadn’t even considered that the car wasn’t Connor’s, and so he hadn’t refused the lift, and so Connor had stolen the car and abandoned Zoe at school and got in trouble with his dad all because Evan was a useless, wreck of a human being who couldn’t even manage such simple, instinctive tasks like _breathing_.

He can’t breathe now any more than he could breathe then.

He needs a Xanax, but he’s useless enough that he still hasn’t got any of those either.

Eventually, the end of lunch time bell rings and Evan decides he needs to get a grip, and so he texts Connor and apologises for the mess he’s caused with surprisingly minimal dithering, and then forces himself to swallow his tears and the vomit that’s been hanging threateningly since the panic attack started and count his own breathing until he doesn’t think he’s going to pass out if he stands. He dries his burning eyes on Connor’s sleeves and, as prepared as he thinks he can be, leaves the small safe space he had found for himself in the grimy toilet cubical.

He goes back to class afterwards, sits on the bench as his classmates either enjoy or endure their sports lesson, and hopes none of them have noticed his blotchy eyes and uneven breathing and the fact that he’s exhausted and hurting and one wrong look away from his second breakdown of the day.

Evan texts Connor on the bus home, apologises again in typo-riddled babble for the mess he’s caused and the trouble Connor’s now in but there’s still no reply by the time the bus has made it to his stop. There’s no reply by the time he’s made it home, or by the time he’s given up on homework and started dinner, or by the time he’s finished one-handedly doing the washing up, or by the time he’s given up on homework for the day.

There’s no reply by the time he goes to bed.

There’s still no reply when, hours later, exhaustion gets the better of his eddying brain and a restless sleep finally claims him.

Heidi is crying when Evan finds himself awake again.

She’s standing in his doorway, her purple scrubs bright against the grubby magnolia of the landing wall as she hovers, leaving weakly against the frame with the fingers of her right hand just skirting the pen marks drawn on the inside edge to mark his height on the morning of each birthday. Her back is to him, her face hidden, but her shoulders shake with quiet sobs that sound so awfully sad that Evan’s own heart clenches and his eyes heat at her pain.

He’s beside her in an instant, his pale arms wrapping around her trembling form and soft, curious words on his lips as he tries to comfort her and she turns in his arms, still trembling as he holds her, shoulders still shaking. It isn’t until she’s round, until she’s facing him, that he realises she isn’t crying at all.

She’s laughing.

Hysterically.

The chocked sort of noise he had mistaken for crying bubbles from lips set in a face more alive than he has seen it in years, and although her blue eyes are wet, the tears are happy, of amusement and delight. The fall freely down her cheeks, undisturbed and unstopped, and between her bubbled laughs are words, two words uttered over and over and over again as she celebrates.

“Mom? Why are you laughing?”

Heidi’s laughter somehow intensifies and she leans backwards a little, using the space between them to wraps her arms around her spasming diaphragm.

“Because I’m free, I’m finally free,” she wheezes in between her gasped amusement. “Because I don’t have to deal with him anymore.”

“With- with who? With Mark?”

“Hah, no,” Heidi scoffs, shaking her head at him with an expression of pure incredulity as though he’s just suggested she he’s finally free of being bothered by bigfoot than the man she once loved. “No, not with Mark. With you, Evan.”

Evan chokes on nothing. The room suddenly feels much, much too big.

“What-”

Laughter, harsh and cruel and aimed at him from the mouth of his mother cuts him off.

“I don’t have to deal with you anymore. I don’t have to waste my time and money and energy and- Hell, I don’t have to waste my life anymore. No more medication to pay for, no more therapy, no more hospital bills, no more pizza. Well not that there was pizza to waste money on anyway, couldn’t even answer the door without having a panic attack!”

Heidi laughs again, her amusement as vicious as her smirk, and Evan takes an involuntary step back, his shoulders curled and arms now hugging himself. Dread pools icily inside his gut and his heart clenches tightly in his chest.

“You did me a favour when you threw yourself out of that tree,” Heidi tells him, and then, just as Evan understands what that means, what she’s implying, everything stops.

The laughter fades.

Time pauses.

The earth’s spinning halts so abruptly Evan almost feels his organs crash to a halt inside his abdomen like they must have done at the violent collision between his body and the parched grass his fall from the tree had ended with.

“Mom, I’m not- I’m not dead?” he rasps, words choked by his too tight throat and the fact there is not enough air left in the room to breathe let alone to talk.

Heidi’s muted laughter stops abruptly.

Her expression falls.

Anger builds.

She looks furious.

“What?” she spits, taking a step towards him. “What is wrong with you? Can you not even kill yourself right?” Her tone is irate, and her expression too, and it’s all too much, too loud, to painful, and Evan takes another step back, stumbling away from her on shaky legs, and he wonders if he’s going to fall, to fail again. That turns out not to matter, though, because his mother’s hands connect with his shoulders, shoving with a furious force, and then he is falling, backwards and backwards and down and down until he hits hard tiles rather threadbare carpet with enough forced that it should hurt but doesn’t.

Evan finds himself on his feet in a room he doesn’t recognise but knows instantly is his dad’s kitchen. The room is wonderfully pristine, clean and uncluttered enough that it would look unlived in if not for the children’s artwork he didn’t draw held to the fridge with magnets from holidays he didn’t go on. There are pictures too, a photo of a couple on their wedding day sat in the corner beside the phone, framed prints on the walls of a happy couple, of a smiling, gap-toothed young girl, of a boy who isn’t him with a smile brighter than one he could ever have managed.

There’s a man in the room too, his dad, Evan knows, in a fancy suit with his hair styled and stubble neatly trimmed and with small, confused smile marring his otherwise carefree expression.

“Evan?” he says, and Evan’s about to reply before he realises his dad isn’t talking to him, but to the cell phone held to his ear with one manicured hand. “Evan,” he repeats with not a hint of recognition in his tone. “Who’s Evan?”

Time pauses and the world tips and the ground faulters and then Evan is falling again.

He finds himself at school, back in the overwhelming, overcrowded corridor, caught up in a stream of students heading towards the main hall, and he ends up being pushed along with them, caught up in the flow, and then they’re in the hall, seated in rows like in assembly and Jared is beside him on his left and Zoe Murphy of all people is to his right and Alana is sat beside her.

“I can’t believe they’ve cancelled class for this,” Alana complains, glaring up at the image cast behind the stage by the overhead projector with an expression of pure annoyance. “I don’t think anyone else even knows who he was.”

Zoe hums in agreement, eyes focused on her phone. “I only know of him because of that time he hovered around outside the jazz band concert and twitched like he was having some sort of seizure. His hands were literally dripping with sweat too. It was disgusting.” She retches theatrically and Evan has to swallow to keep his own stomach from actually rebelling.

Alana elbows her playfully in the ribs. “Ew, stop it, that’s disgusting,” she protests with a laugh. “But yeah, he was weird.”

Jared snorts loudly. “He was more than weird,” he leans forwards to add, a smirk on his lips, “he was a right freak. No wonder he didn’t have any friends.”

“I thought you were his friend?” Zoe asks.

“Family friend,” Alana corrects.

Jared scoffs. “Not even that. I never was and never would be Evan Hansen’s friend. He was a weirdo and a freak and a loser and burden who for some reason thought I liked him. I didn’t like him, though. I hated him and it’s a relief he’s dead. A fucking massive relief.”

Evan thinks his eyes would be burning if he wasn’t so entirely numb. They’re certainly wet anyway.

“Hey, look,” Zoe starts, and she’s not looking at Jared or Alana anymore and she certainly isn’t looking at Evan because he’s pretty sure he’s actually invisible, she’s looking at the stage at the front of the hall, or more precisely, at the image projected on the wall behind it. 

It takes Evan much longer for it should for him to realise it’s his face up there. The picture is awful, his expression a grimace of a smile and his complexion pale behind the bruise-like circles under his tired eyes. There’s writing below the image in massive, dark font, in scratchy chicken scrawl like what would be written on his cast if it were there and although Evan can’t read it, he knows what it says.

_Ethan Hansen_

_March 4th 2002 – August 12th 2019_

“They didn’t even get his name right,” Alana remarks with a chuckle that Evan barely hears because his ears are humming and everything seems a little distant as he stares at a name that isn’t his above a pair of dates that are all too familiar.

More laughing joins hers though, from Jared and Zoe and Heidi and Mark and Mrs Fenton and Mr Marsden and then all the staff and all the students are laughing and he doesn’t know why. Evan stands to run, to flee because it’s all too much but then he isn’t running and he isn’t in the stalls, he’s on the stage in front of the whole student body and the staff and they’re all still laughing, and he thinks they’re probably laughing at him.

His chest is tight and painful, throbbing with each useless hyperventilated inhale and his heart is thrumming and his ears are ringing and it’s all much too much and then suddenly he isn’t facing the students any more, he’s facing the back wall and the massive image of himself that’s projected up there above the name that isn’t his.

There’s blood on his forehead now where there wasn’t before, leaking from a cut just beneath his hairline, and Evan’s sure if the picture wasn’t just of his head, he would find his left arm bent and broken and glistening with red and with bone visible where it really shouldn’t be.

The students are still laughing.

Alana and Zoe are laughing too.

Jared is cheering, whooping in celebration.

“I’m free, I’m finally free!” Heidi exclaims from beside him on the stage where moments before there was empty space.

Evan’s vision swims and his hearing roars and vomit rises and in panic he bolts from the hall. The door hits the wall without a sound as he passes through it, not sure where he’s going just knowing he needs to go. He runs down the corridor and finds a bathroom and pushes the door open and then he’s in a forest.

Or no, not really a forest, he’s in a park, in Ellison State Park and he doesn’t really know why he knows so but he does in that way that only makes sense in dreams.

Connor is beside him.

And Connor isn’t laughing.

“Go on,” he says instead, tone earnest, “it’s what’s best.” And the before Evan has even realised what he’s about to do let alone found the time to stop him, he’s unscrewed the childproof cap of a white plastic bottle and drank the rattling from within.

Evan screams in protest, lunges to wrestle the bottle from his lips, but the grass gives way beneath his grey sneakers, and then there are branches and pine needles and acorns of the oak and suddenly Evan is sitting in a tree once again. 

Just like before, like on the 12th of August, he’s sat in the branches of an oak, a tall one, the tallest in Ellison State park, with his legs hanging over the forest and his grey new balance bland compared to the vibrant life below. He’s high again, high above the world, sitting precariously like he did once before on the day he tried and failed and ruined so many things.

Unlike last time, though, Connor sits beside him.

Or a version of Connor does anyway. This one isn’t the Connor who had sat beside Evan as he thought he was dying and it isn’t the one who had pushed him in the corridor and it isn’t the one who had sat below the tree with a medicine bottle and his life in his hands. This one isn’t animated with a restless, angry energy, this one doesn’t smell of weed and cigarettes and faintly of apple scented shampoo, this doesn’t have those wild, mismatched eyes Evan knows so well.

This one isn’t alive. 

“Do it,” he demands through colourless lips. “Do it for them.”

And Evan wants to say no, or maybe he wants to agree, or maybe he wants to say that hasn’t made up his mind, but he doesn’t get to say anything because suddenly he’s falling, the branch beneath him gone and he doesn’t know if he missed the crack or if maybe there wasn’t one or if maybe this time he did just let go, but it doesn’t matter anyway because he’s falling and falling and falling and he’s going to die.

There’s the sting of the tree against his skin as he scrapes by, the blurred green of their leaves as he passes, the cracks of the branches that break beneath his weight as he hits them. He plummets with a throbbing pain in his head and an agony in his arm and his a burn in his stomach and with sound of this awful, piercing screaming that Evan thinks might be his and hysterical laughter he knows isn’t in his ears. The laughter is fierce and victorious and belongs to his mom and Jared and Connor and Zoe and Alana and Mark and Dr Sherman as they celebrate his fall.

As they celebrate his death.

The laughter and the screaming echo with him as he falls, as he plummets through branches and leaves, heading down and down and down through a never ending supply of greenness that Evan just want to be over, to stop, maybe never to have started because he doesn’t want to be stuck dying forever and yet that is exactly what he seems to be doing.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Connor demands from nowhere, his voice distant and echoing yet booming and much, much too loud and Evan’s shaking his head as he falls because it isn’t it isn’t it isn’t and then suddenly, louder than the cracks of the branches and the victorious laughter and even his own, terrified screams, there’s the awful, nauseating snap made by the bones in a thin left arm as the ground comes from nowhere to meet him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always loved :)


	14. Six am on a Satuday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot to mention this before, a companion pice of sorts now exists, it's called 'Unexpected' and tells some of the chapter where Connor finds Evan from Connor's pov. It has been posted as the second part of the series this fic is in

Evan crashes back to consciousness in a cold sweat and instantly bolts from his bed.

He barely makes it to the bathroom before his reeling stomach rebels and he vomits into the toilet, clutching the seat with trembling, clammy hands as water and juice and the remains of the instant noodles he had picked at for dinner make a violent, pungent return. He all but collapses onto his arms afterwards, his cheek pressed against his rough cast, too shaky and too exhausted to move. His churning stomach is too unsteady to make leaving the toilet wise even if he wanted to.

He coughs wheezy, gasping breaths as he hangs there, each one much too shallow, much too short and soon after the last to be truly productive for anything except adding the taste of the acrid air to the one of acidic bile that’s still lingering in his mouth. He head is pounding, and his knees are sore from their violent collision with the tiles and his throat stings and his eyes burn hotly with unshed tears and his heart thrums ferociously. Each beat throbs it in his throat and drums in his ears along with the echoes of his mother’s laughter and Connor’s goodbye and his dad’s denial of his existence and his own screams as he tumbled through the branches of the tallest oak in Ellison State Park. 

Evan doesn’t think those are a fragment of his imagination. He thinks he probably was screaming as he fell 30 foot from a branch.

Well.

‘Fell’

With fell in quote marks because he didn’t really fall, did he? His decent wasn’t an accident, it was a serious attempt at ending his own life, one that failed because he fails and one that ruined his mom’s education and their finances and his own arm. It hurts as he grasps the lip of the toilet seat with shaking, clammy fingers, but then it would because it hurts all the time, not physically but in his head, in his fucked-up brain, as a constant reminder of what he did and of what he tried and failed to do.

The spiralling abruptly ends as his stomach revolts violently again, muscles spasming painfully despite there being nothing but acid and water left to eject. He spits into the toilet and rests his head back down against the rim and tries and fails to breathe through the bile clogging his throat and his too tight chest. It hurts, burning from the acid and throbbing with tension and aching awfully as his spasming breaths starve his lungs of the oxygen they need.

“Evan?”

The light in the hall flickers on bathing the bathroom in a dim yellow light that’s awfully bright to his unadjusted eyes and over stimulated brain and a chocked sort of noise somewhere between a whimper and a sob bubbles from his chapped lips. 

“What’s going o- Oh, _honey_.”

His mom is with him in an instant, kneeling behind him on the grimy tiles of their bathroom. Her hand finds his back, her touch light as though not to startle him but there and caring and grounding and rubbing soothing circles over his spine as he hunches over the toilet. Unlike in his dream, she isn’t laughing hysterically, she isn’t celebrating his death or angry that he’s failed, she’s murmuring words he can’t hear over the rushing in his ears but knows are of comfort all the same.

It makes sense, really, he knows. What his mom said in his nightmare hadn’t really been said, she wouldn’t really say those things, not directly to him, anyway.

His stomach twists when he realises it doesn’t mean she doesn’t think them though.

The cruel words and laughter of Heidi and Mark and Jared and Alana must have come from somewhere. Dreams tend to be just an exaggerated, bizarre version of life spurred by real thoughts and worries after all.

Evan retches again, muscles spasming unproductively, and Heidi winces and murmurs soothing words he doesn’t really hear as he spits into the bowl. Her hand stays on his back, hovering, just barely touching, but there all the same.

Evan doesn’t need to look up to tell she’s frowning, though. He knows from experience that her entire expression is crumpled with concern she knows she has to give and he does not deserve. He doesn’t know what hurts more, that or dream, but both are more painful than the ache of his abused stomach muscles and the burn of the bile in his throat at the awful, painful tightness that’s taken up residency in his chest. It leaves little room for his racing heart and lungs that inhale and exhale but much too quickly and much too shallowly to bring in any useful amount of air.

“Hey, Evan, honey, breathe with me, okay?” his mom says, her soft, tender tone cutting through the humming in his head and the thundering of his racing heart and the rasps of his useless breaths. He tries to follow her lead as she starts to count for him because it’s the least he can do for her seeing as she’s now kneeling on the floor beside her broken mess of a child rather than asleep in her bed, forcing his breaths in, and out, in, and out, in time with hers as she counts just as she has done for him for years, as she has done for him since they realised it wasn’t asthma he was suffering from but a failing of his own brain at remembering how to breathe.

Her counting helps though. It doesn’t unwind the tension in his shoulders as he curls over the toilet, or the release the painful tightness of his chest, or quell the churning in his stomach, but following her lead at least allows him to force his useless, wheezing breaths in a more normal rhythm.

Gradually, his racing heart slows, and the humming in his ears fades, and his head stops spinning quite so much, and eventually the bathroom solidifies for him just a little. With a stomach that feels nauseous but not to the extent that it’ll rebel, Evan shakily uncurls himself from around the toilet and slumps back against the wall. His legs end up curled awkwardly beneath him, but he doesn’t care enough to summon the energy to move any further. Heidi shuffles to sit beside him, no longer counting, just watching him through sad eyes and rubbing her thumb soothingly over the bare skin of his forearm. It shakes under her touch, trembling with both dissipating adrenaline and cold. 

“You good now?” she probes gently, her tone heavy with a concern Evan can easily read in her tired expression despite the dim lighting and his poor eyesight.

Looking at her blurry face in the blurry room doesn’t help his still unsteady stomach and he closes sticky, salty eyes and swallows bitter bile and then, as an afterthought nods in answer to his mom’s question. His head rolls wearily against the wall.

“You okay if I go get you some water?”

Another nod, and then with a promise to be quick, she’s darted from the room and he’s again alone. His arm feels very cold without her touch and his breathing feels odd and uneven again without her lead. He tries to follow the memory of her counting as a poor substitution for her real words and tries not to think of anything but that because he’s sure he’ll end up spiralling again if he allows his thoughts their freedom and he can’t deal with that right now because he’s still, so, so close to another breakdown. He’s always close to having one nowadays, he finds, like he’s walking on a tightrope, his posture tight with anxiety and fear of what’s coming, one wrong move from falling into the abyss. It’s utterly exhausting.

“Here.”

Evan opens damp eyes and lifts his heavy head from his knees to find his mom beside him again. His water bottle is in her hand. It’s wet, the outside dripping, the drops glinting in the soft lighting drifting through from the hall, and cold to the touch when he takes it. He takes a sip to rinse the bitter taste of stomach acid and bile from his mouth and spits into the toilet beside him. He drinks the next, shivering lightly from the chill it brings. The cool water is soothing against his sore throat though, and it helps to settle his nausea a little more.

“What’s caused this?” Heidi asks softly. She’s kneeling before him once again, her hands clasped on her knees but restless.

Evan swallows his sip of water. “Nightmare,” he rasps quietly, his gaze falling to the blue plastic bottle in his hand and his cheeks heating as he realises he’s just admitted that his sickness and the following panic attack were triggered by something as pathetic as a bad dream. It’s a pitiful example of how much of a mess he is.

“I thought you’d grown out of that?”

Evan shrugs jerkily in answer to his mom’s stupid question because, clearly, he hasn’t. Heidi sighs softly, but her exhale is more in sympathy rather than subdued frustration as it usually is if Evan is reading her weary, worried expression correctly.

“Would talking about it help?” she asks gently, and although it probably would, Evan shakes his head, rolling it back against the wall behind him because knows he can’t explain to her what had happened in his dream. He isn’t sure he physically could without vomiting again anyway.

“Okay,” Heidi says after a pause, tone calm and controlled and maybe a little disappointed. “Do you think you could sleep a little more? You look exhausted.”

Evan’s worn brain takes a second to comprehend the change in topic, and then, upon realising what she has said, he shakes his aching head.

His mom frowns, brows furrowing in concern over heavy eyes. “Are you sure? It’s still early.”

“What’s the time?” he asks, a frown on his own tired brow because until that moment, he hadn’t really considered time was a thing. He hadn’t considered that it was very likely the middle of the night, that it was still almost dark outside the mottled window of the bathroom, that the birds he used to adore as a child were yet to start their morning song. He used to mimic them when he was very little, chirping tunefully along with them in the mornings. Heidi had found it sweet. Mark hadn’t been quite so impressed.

Heidi hums and leans to look at the clock just about visible on her bedside table through the open doors. “Just before six,” she says, summarising the glowing green numbers that Evan’s eyes are unable to really see let alone read.

He grimaces at the time and at the guilty stab in his unsettled stomach it brings. “Sorry,” he mutters, his hazel eyes breaking away from his mother’s blue to find the floor.

“Whatever for?”

A shrug jolts his narrow shoulders. “Waking you.”

“Honey-”

“It’s your morning off,” he interrupts, hazel eyes flicking briefly up to meet hers before the retreat to the floor once again. His bitten nails scratch at the thin strip of pale, goose fleshed skin between his cast and his elbow hard enough to sting.

“Evan,” Heidi sighs, her tone soft but upset and a little frustrated. She reaches out to him, taking his good hand in hers and stilling his restless fingers. He doesn’t pull away. “That doesn’t matter. At all. Okay? You know I don’t like sleeping in on late days anyway. Besides” -she pauses, waits for him to look up before continuing. He finds there’s a weary but earnest sort of smile on her otherwise troubled expression- “if you’re not going to sleep, it just means there’s more morning for me to spend with you.”

She gives his hand a squeeze, and he, after a moment, tightens his grasp back. He doesn’t agree with her that it’s okay, surely she’d much rather be sleeping than reminding her vomit-scented 17 year old failure of a human how to breathe, but him starting an argument isn’t what she deserves right now.

“I guess,” he agrees, forcing a small, tired smile onto his bitten lips. It stings a little, but he probably deserves it.

“Great!” she announces with too much faux brightness. “Although, maybe, if your stomach is a bit more settled, we can spend it somewhere that isn’t the bathroom floor?”

Evan looks up to find her smiling again, grinning at her own feeble joke, and it’s tired and forced but she’s making the effort and, despite himself, he knows he must too, so he forces a chuckle from his too tight chest, and then nods and wipes the tears he doesn’t remember shedding from his cheeks.

Evan ends up on the sofa, wrapped up in his dressing gown with a blanket over his knees and his heavy head resting back on the cushions whilst he waits for Heidi to make the tea she’s promised him. The telly is on and a repeat of some sort of quiz show playing, but his own thoughts are much too loud for him to hear the questions and the window between him and the world is much too mottled for him to read them even with his glasses on. He doesn’t think he could say what the questions were or even what game show is about let alone answer anything correctly.

He isn’t with it at all, he’s barely in the room, his body in their lounge, curled on the threadbare cushion of their ratty sofa but his mind still up a tree, in a forest, watching branches pass and pills be swallowed and listening to laughter he knows isn’t real but is echoing in his ears all the same.

Heidi eventually returns, drawing him out of his own head just a little, and she passes him the faded blue mug he’d chosen at Disneyland many years before and warns him that the boiled water inside is hot as though he’s five and then settles down on the sofa beside him. There’s a mug in her own hands, and she sips at it gingerly as she pretends to watch the repeat on the telly when instead she’s watching him. Evan pretends not to notice and fixes his eyes in the direction of the screen and drinks his too hot tea. It scolds his tongue, but he doesn’t really care.

“Evan,” she says after a minute of almost awkward silence, “how are you doing for meds. Do you need a refill?”

There’s an unexpected weight to her tone that there needn’t be for such a frequently asked question and Evan finds her expression is a creased in almost cautious concern when he questioningly looks up from his tea. His chest tightens a little in apprehension as he wonders what she’s really asking.

“Oh, no, I’m good, I’ve got- you only checked last week.”

Heidi nods once but judging by her expression, she’s entirely unappeased by his answer. Her eyes stay fixed on him for a moment, an almost calculating look behind the blue, a frown grows on the brow above them. She looks unsure behind her worry, conflicted, almost, and then- “You are” -she pauses, grimacing a little- “you are still taking them, aren’t you?”

Evan’s stomach squirms uncomfortably at both the realisation that he’s visibly enough of a mess that she thinks he might be off his meds again and the irritation that she’d think he’d try again after what happened last time.

“_Really_?”

“Humour me?”

Evan sighs. “Yes, I’m still taking them. Every morning,” he tells her, and he isn’t being entirely truthful but he’s nearly there. He hasn’t been skipping doses on purpose anyway because, as much as he would love to not need his meds, to not have to drug his mind into even vaguely functioning, he knows better than to stop taking them. He’s tried so before after a few too many questions from Jared sent his broken mind to the conclusion that he should be able to function just fine without them, everyone else could, and the whole experience had been … well, it had not been a good experience.

At first, he’d been okay, but by that evening he’d been feeling anxious and irritable and over the course of the four days that followed, he’d suffered through headaches and shakes and nausea and more panic attacks than in the three months since he’d started taking them combined. On the evening of the fourth day he’d been freaked enough to admit to his mom what he’d done and she’d taken him to the hospital which he’d thought it was overkill at the time, but at least they’d been able to fix the chemical imbalance in his brain and blessedly end the symptoms the withdrawal he’d brought upon himself.

So, yeah. Evan knows better than to stop taking his meds.

Well, he knows better than to go cold turkey on them anyway.

He could wean himself off them but…

“You haven’t been missing doses, forgetting them, something like that?” Heidi presses lightly. 

“No, no, I’ve been- been taking them.” Evan looks up from his restless cast-destroying fingers to find he can’t quite tell if the expression she’s wearing is concerned or relieved. Maybe it’s a mixture of the two, relief that he’s not been daft enough to just stop taking the medicine he’s been prescribed again and concern that he’s still a broken, struggling mess all the same. 

“Okay,” she says, apparently at least accepting that he’s not taken himself off his meds again, but there’s still a heavy undercurrent to her tone and Evan knows she really wants to say more, to ask what is wrong if it isn’t another lack-of-medication induced chemical imbalance in his brain, and he really, really doesn’t want to answer that.

Heidi doesn’t seem to want to ask either. Or maybe she doesn’t know how.

Evan thinks it’s probably the latter.

He tries not to dwell on that, tries to focus on the repeat of the quiz show they’re numbly watching, and then when it ends, he does as he’s asked and picks something from Netflix for them to watch.

It’s The Great British Baking Show they end up watching, and although Evan does like it, enjoys the cakes and the jokes of Mel and Sue and the good natured competition between the contestants, he really put it on because he knows his mom likes it and she deserves to be watching something she likes. Especially seeing as it’s barely 6 am on her day off work and she’s sitting downstairs on the sofa with him rather than still peacefully sleeping in her bed.

Heidi reaches for the blanket still perched on Evan’s knees as the intro tune starts playing and, being careful of the mugs of tea, flaps it open and spreads it over them both. It’s a blanket they’ve had as long as Evan can remember, one he and his mom have spent many a grey day curled up under as they watched movies rented from the DVD store in town, and so it’s old and worn and beginning to pluck in places. It’s still soft, though, and smells comfortingly familiar and provides a cosy barrier between Evan and the frigid air of their living room.

It even seems to warm the air metaphorically too, and a few minutes into the show, Heidi’s arm worms its way between his back and the sofa cushion and pulls him closer. Evan stiffens, briefly, but then relaxes just a little into her embrace. There’s a soft, almost honest smile on her lips as she leans her head onto his shoulder and the ever present concerned pinch to her brow has relaxed just a little at his acceptance of her hug.

Evan thinks he might have relaxed it a bit too; the ever present anxious tightness in his chest has loosened just a little anyway. The morning hasn’t been good, not at all, and whilst it still couldn’t be described as nice, exactly, because Evan’s still feeling a little nauseous and there’s a headache playing in his temples and it’s 6 am on a Saturday and the house is almost unpleasantly cold and there’s still that niggling thought in his mind that what everyone said in his dream had is true, it could certainly be worse.

Evan could be alone too. 

He isn’t alone though, and together, they watch cakes being baked and the technical challenge being attempted with varying degrees of success. By the time they’re judging the Bakewell Tarts the contestants have tried to bake, Heidi’s breathing has deepened, and her head has fallen heavy on Evan’s shoulder. Evan makes it about halfway into the Show Stopper before he is dozing too.


	15. What's gotten into you?

The boiler has been broken since May.

Or, well, not broken, exactly, it still heats water, but it doesn’t turn on by itself anymore, and while that isn’t a huge problem in the evenings, it does mean early morning showers require getting up even earlier than normal to turn the boiler on and then allow time for the water to heat up first. It’s either that or shower cold.

Evan prefers to shower in the evenings usually, so it doesn’t make that much difference to him, but on the mornings when he does shower, more often than not he decides to wake earlier and wait for the water.

He’d waited today, too, sat beside his mom on the sofa as they re-watched the end of the episode of the Great British Baking Show they’d slept though and then a second one, but it isn’t as though there is a reason for him not to. He isn’t in a rush, he hasn’t anywhere to be, and on a normal Saturday, he probably wouldn’t bother to shower at all. Today he’d needed to though, he’d been sweaty from the nightmare and pretty sure he still smelt of vomit despite the two thorough brushings of his teeth. He’d still been tense and on edge, too, and he’d hoped that a warm shower would maybe make him feel just a little more normal.

It had helped, kind of; his skin and hair are now clean, and he no longer has to worry about the lingering sour smell of vomit, and the slightly too warm water has helped to ease a little of the tension across his achy shoulders. Dressing and shaving had made him feel just a little more like a functioning human being too, and so between that and the shower and the accidental nap he’d taken on the sofa, he’s actually feeling not too bad considering.

“Is your arm still hurting you?”

Evan’s head jolts up quickly enough he’s surprised he doesn’t end up with whiplash to find his mom hovering in his bedroom doorway. There’s a pinch between her eyebrows and a frown on her lips and her tone is weighty with concern. It’s a standard sort of concern though, Evan thinks, concern because his broken arm is still sore rather than the frustrated, tired sort of concern he so often sees because she’s drawn the short straw and ended up with a useless, mess of a human being who’s almost always one wrong word away from some sort of mental breakdown for a son.

“You were wincing.” She nods down at his arm and his hazel eyes follow her blue to the damp clingfilm he’s been trying to unwrap from his cast. It’s never an easy task, and today he’s made more of a hash of it than usual, and the film seems to have formed an endless loop that’s fixed too tightly for him to wriggle it free. He’d been attempting to pull hard enough to snap it when she’d caught him, because although putting more pressure on an already sore broken wrist doesn’t seem like a great idea, he’s pretty sure the pain’s in his head and google seems to agree. It’s kind of hard to force himself to tear the plastic from the cast when his arm is begging him to stop, though.

“Oh, um, a little,” he mutters, unable to tell her that the pain isn’t real without sounding like he’s having more of a mental health crisis that she likely already knows he is.

His mom hums distrustfully. “Maybe we ought to say something at your check up next week,” she suggests from the doorway. He doesn’t even need to look up to know she’s frowning. “I’m not sure it should still be bothering you this much, it’s been nearly five weeks since you broke it.”

Evan scowls at his cast instead of his mother and pulls ineffectively at the plastic. “Yeah, but, um, it’s only been four since the surgery and- and like three since they put this cast on so, it’s- it’s probably fine. And, like, it doesn’t hurt that much normally, it’s just- just, the clingfilm’s-” He gives the plastic a frustrated tug with twitchy fingers and then winces involuntarily instead of finishing his sentence.

“Evan,” Heidi scolds sympathetically as she crosses the room to come and sit beside him on his bed. “Look, let me.” Before he can argue, and with hands so much more cautious than Connor’s, she’s taken his cast and pulled it towards her. Her fingers are gentle as they pick at the waterproof wrapping, searching for the end and then unwinding the knotted film carefully so as not to hurt.

It comes away eventually, a soggy, plastic sheet that Heidi balls up in slender hands, leaving the cast beneath a little damp, speckled with rogue droplets, and bear, with the bold, black lettering that Evan had somehow not considered in his frustration suddenly exposed.

Heidi looks at Connor’s name written roughly in stark marker, her expression unreadable, until it’s snatched away from her view.

Evan finds himself on his feet and trying very hard not to hyperventilate.

“It’s Tuesday, isn’t it, my check up?” he manages to ask instead, voice tight and wrong and expression briefly hidden as he turns to search the floor for Connor’s hoodie. The distraction method is so, so obvious he really expects Heidi to glance up with that frustrated, awfully sad expression and then refuse to let the issue drop. She hadn’t wanted to let the issue of Connor’s name drop in the hospital, and then it had just been a name he’d slurred as he’d surfaced confused and hurting from unconsciousness.

Now it’s a name written in bold, black letters. It’s unmistakable.

Except Heidi doesn’t do what Evan expects at all. She blinks, then grimaces, expression suddenly guilty, and then he kind of knows what’s coming next. It’s a relief even though it normally wouldn’t be.

“Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you; I couldn’t get the time off until Friday, so I moved it to then.” She looks away and sighs and runs a hand forcefully though her blonde, sleep matted hair. “I wouldn’t have changed it if I knew it was still hurting you though. Something might be-”

“Nothing’s wrong, mom. It’s- I’m fine, I- I just shouldn’t have been pulling so hard, is all. Friday is- it’s fine, really,” Evan interrupts as calmly as he’s able as he shakily shrugs on the hoodie with more urgency with coordination. The sleeve catches on his cast in his haste, and he barely holds back a wince as it jars his wrist. The hem of his grey shirt catches, too, ending up stuck on the top of his too loose khakis and he tugs it back down violently, avoiding his mother’s eyes.

Her expression is still a little pinched and a lot apologetic but now there’s a different sort of frown on her brow too.

It’s one he’s all too familiar with.

“Honey, I’m worried about you,” she says delicately as she watches him from the bed, and Evan knows the conversation has moved on from her worries about his fractured wrist to other issues. Just like whenever she’s said just that before she sounds sincere, like she really worries, and she really cares. Even that hurts, though, because Evan just can’t stand that she does. She shouldn’t be so obliged to try and fix a mess like him, he isn’t worth it. Not at all.

He turns away, feeling trapped and tense and all too exposed, and ends up sat at his desk just because then he at least isn’t facing his mom. His restless hands find the comb sat beside the small stand mirror he keeps there for fitting his contact lenses.

“You don’t- you don’t need to worry, mom; I’m fine, really,” he lies, trying his best to keep his tone light and voice level and failing miserably. The tightness in his tremoring words doesn’t exactly support his lie that all is well, and twitchiness of his fingers as he pretends to fix his hair doesn’t exactly help either.

Heidi watches him for a moment, tired blue eyes fixed on him almost cautiously as though he’s a particularly skittish animal she needs to capture. Her voice is cautious when she speaks too.

“Evan,” she sigh, her voice soft but unbelievably heavy as she says his name. It sounds like all of her concern and frustration and upset and disappointment has been compressed to fit inside those four letters. “Please, honey, I just want to know what’s wrong?”

Evan’s shoulders tense defensively at the threat of questions he doesn’t want to answer. In the mirror he caches a flash of his mom’s troubled expression before his eyes return to his clammy, twitchy hands. It hurts to see her pain, her worry and upset, and it hurts to lie to her too, but he knows he can’t tell her everything that is bothering him. Hell, he can’t tell her anything. He couldn’t bear to see the heartbreak in her eyes if he did. The pain he causes by not letting her in is miniscule compared to how she’ll feel it he does.

“Mom, really, nothing’s wrong,” he insists before she can say anything else, and he turns back around and tries to smile even though he’s hurting and broken inside. “Honestly, I’m just … just busy with school and- and homework and other stuff. It’s just start- start of senior year and- um, and all that.”

On his bed, Heidi’s frown morphs from troubled to confused to uncertain and Evan wonders if she’s internally debating the pros and cons of believing him. It would be a whole lot easier for the both of them if she did.

“Do you- we could watch some more Stranger Things, if you have time. Before work?” he blurts before she can decide not to and resume the conversation on how much of a mess he is or, worse, move her attention back to the name scrawled across his cast.

Heidi frowns at him. She looks a little startled by the sudden change in topic. She looks like she wants to argue too, like she wants to protest and ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer. But, to his relief, she doesn’t.

Instead, she nods and plasters on her usual faux smile. “Yeah, sure. That sounds nice,” she agrees, and says nothing more about it as he leads her back down to the living room and turns on the TV.

Evan takes the remote and sets Netflix playing, and then sits on the sofa beside his mom and wonders whether she’d dropped the conversation because she’d decided she believed him when he said he was just busy, or whether she’d just had enough trying to fix her broken son for the day.

As relieved as he is that she’s agreed to watch Stranger Things with him rather than discuss feelings he doesn’t want to discuss and worries that he can’t, it still hurts that it’s probably the latter.

Three episodes of Stranger Things get watched that morning. Pancakes get cooked and eaten in an odd sort of silence and the washing up is done to the tune of the radio. The chores get completed, the vacuuming and mopping and laundry and tidying, and then more Netflix is watched.

And then, after a packet of chips to see her through to dinner, Heidi goes to work.

She leaves Evan on the sofa, parts with an instruction to get some rest because he looks like he needs it, and to do his homework, and write a letter, and remember to eat dinner. There’s a pizza in the freezer if he wants it. She tells him she won’t be back until late tonight, she’s taken a double shift, and tomorrow she’ll likely leave in the morning before he’s awake but promises to be back for dinner. She’s going to cook a little roast dinner, she says, with roast potatoes and parsnips and chicken and stuffing. It’ll be good.

Evan smiles and says he’ll try and that he’s looking forwards to it and then, with a last ‘I love you’ and a kiss to the top of his head, she’s gone.

He does rest, physically, at least, and he does attempt his homework and cooks and picks at pizza, and he does consider, and then decide against, writing a letter for Dr Sherman. A second text to Connor gets sent too, an item not on his mom’s list but something that desperately needed doing. The message is slowly typed throughout the day with twitchy, sweaty thumbs, read over and over by red-rimmed, hazel eyes, and thought about near constantly by an anxious, overworked brain.

In the end, it’s all for nothing as there’s no reply to his concern.

Evan tries again on Sunday and Connor at least texts back this time. It’s a short, typo ridden message that tells him to fuck off and demands that Evan leave him alone, but it’s a sign he’s still alive at least.

Evan reads the angry, text once, twice, and then in a fit of upset, throws his phone at the foot of his bed in frustration. Almost soundlessly, it bounces off the mattress before hitting the carpet with a dull thud, and Evan stares at where it should have landed for a moment before he lets out a wet sort of sigh and guiltily forces himself to unknot his limbs from the ball he’s curled himself into and fetch it from the floor. Through tear-blurred eyes, he checks the tiny screen for cracks. 

Heidi doesn’t roast a chicken for dinner, she works instead, and Evan ends up picking at the cold remains of yesterday’s pizza before depositing it back into the fridge. It’s an easy lunch for tomorrow, at least.

Monday morning dawns, and before Evan is even entirely awake, Heidi’s already bugging him about the pizza in the fridge. Evan prods at his cereal and mutters that he wasn’t hungry and tells her he’ll do better in the future, but Heidi has already hurried away to change into her scrubs. She offers him a lift to school when she returns, and as much as Evan wants to decline, the sky is grey and overcast and threatening rain. It starts spitting as Evan is brushing his teeth, and by the time they’re leaving, the heavens are open and fat, heavy raindrops are leaking from the clouds.

“Have you looked at those scholarship essays I sent you?” Heidi asks over the din of the rain drumming on the metal roof and the wiper blades squeaking over the glass of the windscreen. Evan grimaces out the rain-streaked window and tells her he has even though it isn’t true, and although he’d hoped she’d placated by that, it seems she isn’t as more questions follow. She asks about how his answers are coming along, and when the deadlines for them are, and then she changes the conversation to the upcoming deadlines for college applications and asks how that’s going.

Evan tries not to crack under the onslaught, tries to remember her questions are all innocent, just the worries of a parent of a high school senior, but she seems tense and frustrated and a little fed up and while he understands that entirely, it isn’t long before his patience wears through.

“Just stop with the interrogation, okay,” he snaps eventually, and Heid takes her eyes off to road to give him a scolding frown. There’s hurt beneath her irritation too.

“I don’t know what’s got into you lately, Evan,” she scolds lightly, her gaze again on the road. It stays fixed there for the rest of the journey, and her brow stays furrowed, and her lips sealed.

Evan sits in silence for the rest of the drive too and tries to ignore the guilty knot tightening in his stomach.

In homeroom, Evan realises Connor is missing again, and he’s busy worrying about that when Alana comes to sit beside him and with a serious expression, invites him to join her study group.

“I think you could do with some help,” she explains when he asks why. “You’re behind on your homework and your grades are slipping. You were 5th in the year at the start of the term and that’s pretty good but you’re not going to stay there if you don’t work for it. Your current place in the year means you could go to a pretty good college if you wanted to, but at this rate your risking losing out on that.”

Evan opens his mouth, mutters a couple of ‘um’s’ as his brain flits between saying no, and yes, and asking how she knows where he is in the year and asking how she knows his currently place in the year when even he doesn’t, but Alana is talking again before he can form any of it into sentences.

“I do know were injured pretty seriously over the summer,” she interrupts, a hint of sympathy underneath her candid tone, “and I understand you may still be experiencing some after effects of that, but you need to keep your grades up if you want to have any chance at going to a decent college. And I can help with that, if you come along. Just consider it, okay?”

“Oh, um, okay, I’ll, um- I’ll think about it,” Evan finds himself saying despite having no intent on joining her to study. Her offer is sweet, and what she has said is true, and maybe in the past or in the future he would have wanted to go along and meet new people, find new friends, have something to see his mom smile over, but at the moment, he doesn’t think he’s able.

Alana takes it as an agreement, though, and smiles and tells him when and where and says she’ll see him there, and then gets up and goes to read at her desk and leaves him alone with his thoughts.

It isn’t until after she’s gone that he wonders why she knows he was so unwell barely a month ago when she hadn’t the first day back. The question quickly gets filed away with those of why she knows about his finances and year position and who gave Connor his phone number as one of those things that’s weird and a little bit of an invasion of his privacy, but that really, really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Jared avoids him like the plague all morning and while it isn’t fine Jared won’t even look at him anymore, at least Evan has an excuse not to talk to him.

Lunch passes slowly, with Evan sat alone in the abandoned upstairs computer room, and he spends the hour staring at his schoolbooks. His itchy eyes skim over lines of text he can neither focus on nor understand whilst he ruins the cuticles on the shaky fingers sticking out of his cast.

He tries to concentrate on the work he needs to do, and he tries to ignore his anxious mind as it reminds him over and over that Connor is missing again, and he tries to stop the trembling of his hands and the restless twitching of his legs, and he tries to eat despite his too tight, too nauseous stomach, but he fails at all of it.

He’s failing entirely, and he doesn’t think he can go on much longer without the mess he has become being entirely unhideable.

He isn’t sure he can go on much longer, period. 

Evan walks home from school on Monday. He shouldn’t be walking home, he knows, both because he shouldn’t really be walking anywhere so far away with his legs so shaky, and because home isn’t where he’s meant to be going. Just like every second Monday, he has a therapy session booked. One hour scheduled just after school, in which he and Dr Sherman are meant to work together to fix the mess that is his brain.

Evan thinks he would probably laugh at the concept if he had the energy.

The rain patters against the hood of his jacket as he walks, and it bounces off his shoulders and the pavement and forms rings of ripples in the puddles where it hits. It’s heavy, the drops fat and frequent and hazing the road ahead, and it’s been raining for long enough that impromptu streams have formed in the cracks of the sidewalk and along the sides of the road. Cars clip the edges of them sometimes, spraying more droplets up into the air amongst the rain. Some of them hit Evan, but he’s wet enough already that a little extra water isn’t going to matter.

He can’t deny he’s tired though, or that the suddenly cool September air isn’t starting to seep through his thin, slightly too small coat. The onslaught of rain is soaking through the worn waterproof fabric to his hoodie, too, and the rest of the cool water is running down his too short sleeves and soaking the cuffs sticking out the end. The water drips off his fingers and nose, and although it isn’t an unpleasant feeling, it’s still cool and tickles a little. Evan isn’t sure it’s all that good for his cast, either.

Despite the rain and the cold, Evan finds he doesn’t really mind the walk; it’s an improvement over getting the bus anyway. Instead of people and chatter he has nature and quiet. It’s almost silent save for the splash of cars driving through the puddles and the pitter-patter of the fat droplets as they drum against his hood. It’s like white noise, almost peaceful in its own way, and while none of it quite covers the din of anxiety in his mind, but it certainly gives him something else to focus on.

At the moment, he needs the distraction from his brain more than ever.

It’s the startlingly loud, aggressively long cry of a car horn that abruptly pulls Evan from his thoughts, and he startles round to find a small red car swerving over towards him from the centre of the lane. Panicked but frozen, he stands and stares, and then, just as he’s getting ready to throw himself out of the path of the approaching car and into the garden of the house he’s beside, he realises just who it is who is driving. Despite their frankly terrifying current path, he knows they’re probably not actually planning on hitting him.

It wouldn’t be good for their car insurance if they did, for more reasons than one.

The panicked expression he knows he’s wearing morphs to confusion, then irritation before he carefully schools it into something more shielded just as Jared abruptly pulls up beside him on the curb. Water splashes up from the impromptu river at the edge of the road and he tries not to react when it hits his already damp khakis and sneakers and drips down into his sock.

“Get in before I change my mind,” Jared snaps through the already open window, and Evan hesitates for a moment, weighs walking in the rain against a conversation with Jared, then does as he’s told and climbs inside the car. His backpack leaves a puddle on the floor, and he’s very aware his coat is very likely soaking the seat too. With shaky, cold-stiff hands, he buckles his seatbelt anyway.

“Thanks,” he mutters, just as Jared pulls away, and Jared sniffs and nods.

“Well, you’d probably catch pneumonia or something walking home in that,” he defends himself, his eyes firmly fixed out the front window.

Evan finds himself nodding even though he knows that isn’t how getting ill works. Colds and flus and chest infections come from viruses and bacteria, not walking in the rain or being cold. Not that Evan isn’t just a little relieved to be out of the cold, even though he knew it wasn’t going to make him ill. 

Sitting up straight in the seat so as not to make the back damp with his coat, he pushes back his hood and tries his best to wipe the drips from his face, and then rubs his palms over his saturated khakis in a futile attempt to dry them. He briefly considers unzipping his coat to find a dry spot of his hoodie to wipe them on but abandons that idea almost instantly because judging by the way it’s sticking to his skin, he thinks it must be wet too.

He’s soaked entirely, he realises.

Even the padding lining his cast feels disgustingly damp, and for once, it isn’t due to sweat.

The cast itself doesn’t look to have been damaged by the rain, though. The fibreglass below his wrist is damp and shiny but it isn’t peeling any more than it had been before. Connor’s name has stayed stubbornly where he had written it too, the Sharpie not bothered by the rain in the slightest. Evan doesn’t really know how he feels about that. Half of him wants it gone, or at least smaller but that just isn’t possible, and the other half of him is just pleased that someone at least had written something there. There’s a little part of him that likes the connection to Connor too.

A sudden whooshing fills the car and Evan finds himself being assaulted by a cold breeze that hadn’t been there before. When he looks up, he finds Jared’s hand just heading back from the control panel of the air conditioning to the steering wheel.

He frowns and then shivers involuntarily, sending drips of water flying from his hair, and Jared must have seen out of the corner of his eye because he grimaces.

“You’re steaming up the windscreen,” he explains a little harshly, and Evan looks up to realise that the glass of the windscreen and the windows has indeed been fogged up by the water he has brought into Jared’s still cool car.

“Sorry,” he mutters even though there is little he could have done to prevent it. Well, he could have not got in. He wouldn’t be able to steam up the car if he wasn’t in it. He wouldn’t have to sit in awkward silence beside his ex-family-friend if he’d just continued his walk home either. He wonders if Jared regrets picking him up as much as he regrets accepting the lift.

“You didn’t have to pick me up, you know,” he says suddenly, restless fingers playing with his soggy hem, “I was okay walking, and like, being out in the cold can’t actually make you ill, and even if it did it wouldn’t have been your fault. I could have got the bus. I-I’m meant to be getting the bus, and like, it isn’t your job to drive me just because I decided to walk home instead. A-anyway, it’s just rain- it’s not like- it’s not like I’m not waterproof or something.” Evan forces a nervous laugh and shuffled on the seat. His legs leave a mark where his khakis have been pressed against them. “I’m ruining your seat too, oh god-”

“Jesus Christ, Evan, I wasn’t complaining,” Jared snaps, “I just meant I know you’re cold but it’s hard enough to see in this rain without you fogging up the glass.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Evan sneaks a glance up from his hands to find’s Jared’s expression is hard. He’s clearly irritated, more so than before, and Evan knows it’s because he’s over-reacted yet again. His brain sometimes goes much too fast for its own good, his anxiety spilling worries before he’s even had a chance to really consider whether they valid or not.

He knows his upset about Jared was valid though, even his mess of a brain couldn’t imagine the cutting remarks and relentless teasing and the standoffish behaviour of the past week, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t overreact to that to. He’d regretted what he’d said to Jared in the bathroom as soon as he’d said it, but at the time he had been hurt and angry and upset and had wanted Jared to be hurting too.

He doesn’t want Jared to be hurting now, though. 

“Look, Jared, I’m um- I’m sorry about what I said t-the other day, too. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.” He pauses, waiting for an answer that doesn’t come. It isn’t all that surprising, he supposes. He understands where Jared’s behaviour had come from, and despite his apology, none of what had caused the rift between them has changed. It’s okay though, Evan decides. Or well, not okay, but he understands. “Also Jared, I just… I- I get it, so it’s -it’s okay.”

Jared frowns but doesn’t look round. “Get what?” he asks, and while his tone hasn’t quite lost the hard edge, there’s an uplift of confusion to it too.

“W-why you don’t want to be friends with me. Like, I wouldn’t, so...” Evan breaks off, shrugs jerkily. The wet cotton of his hoodie feels awfully tacky against his cold skin.

“Ev-”

“No, really,” he interrupts before Jared can start to make his excuses. “It’s okay. I understand. I-I know I’m weird and awkward and I stutter, a-and I can barely even answer the door without having a panic attack, so, like, it’s- it’s okay.” He draws a breath that shakes a little more wetly than he’d like. It catches in his throat and makes a raspy sort of sound that makes it sound very much like he’s chocking. Maybe he is, his chest feels a little tight again.

He hopes Jared will maybe put it down to cold or the illness he’d predicted Evan would catch in the rain rather than emotion.

A moment passes and then Jared sighs. “Yeah, okay, so that’s all true,” he agrees dismissively, “but me ignoring you was still a dick move.” The end of his sentence comes across softer than the start and Evan looks up to find Jared’s irritated expression and tense posture have relaxed a little. He still doesn’t look happy, but he isn’t quite frowning any more either.

A knot loosens a fraction in Evan’s gut, and it takes him a moment to realises his shoulders don’t feel quite as tight than they had been before either. He isn’t entirely sure that isn’t at least partially due to the warmer air coming through the blowers as the engine heats up, but he’s sure some of his relaxation is due to the defrosting of the icy atmosphere inside the car.

He tries to smile a little, nods in agreement because Jared ignoring him was a dick move, and it had hurt. “Yeah, it was, a-and me saying you didn’t have any other friends was a d-dick move too.”

Jared huffs a humourless sort of laugh. Shrugs jerkily as though he’s trying to appear much more carefree than he is. “Yeah, well. It’s true.”

“You have camp friends?” Evan protests, confused. “A-and coding club friends? And your girlfriend in … Israel?” He can’t quite remember if it’s Israel Jared said or not but isn’t sure it matters. Jared doesn’t seem to care if he gets it wrong anyway.

“It’s not like I talk to them outside of camp though,” he admits a little bitterly and Evan knows for sure that he’d hit a nerve with what he’d said the other day. He’d suspected it, sure, the barbs in arguments always come from somewhere even if one is just grasping at straws, but something in his chest aches a little to hear it confirmed.

It turns out Jared’s as much of a loner as he is, and Evan wonders just how bad he can be that Jared would rather have no company than his.

He’s still trying to work out what to say when Jared’s speaking again.

“Who signed your cast?”

Evan’s eyes shoot down to the cast to find the C and the curve of the O just about visible beneath the bottom of his sleeve. He tugs it down, hoping to God Jared hadn’t actually managed to read the name and trying to come up with some sort of explanation for the bold letters on his arm. His stumbling brain is halted by laughter.

“Wait, no, _how_ did someone sign your cast? It isn’t like you talk to anyone to ask them!” Jared snickers, returning so quickly to his usual mocking self that Evan thinks he might have gotten whiplash. Something inside him hurts after that comment, anyway. 

“I asked you to. A-and Alana,” he retorts, a little indignantly.

Jared glances over, eyebrows raised. “And clearly someone else because I didn’t sign it and that wasn’t an A.”

“I didn’t ask, actually.”

“They offered?”

Evan tries not to flinch at Jared’s surprised tone. “Why do you want to know? A few days ago you didn’t even want to look at me,” he snaps, shooting a glare at Jared.

His eyebrows are still raised and he looks amused by the turn of events. Evan wonders if he’s just pleased to have the topic of conversation off himself and the interaction between them back to almost how it usually is.

Instead of answering, Jared smirks and shoots out a hand and tries somewhat successfully to push up Evan’s sleeve.

“Hey!” Evan yells indignantly as he snatches his arm defensively away, and Jared, seemingly unperturbed by his yell and the pained wince that followed, laughs and tries to follow until the car jolts rather violently to the side.

A car coming the other way toots its horn angrily just as Evan shrieks, and Jared aborts his mission in favour of not crashing into oncoming traffic.

He swears under his breath and laughs but Evan doesn’t think it funny at all. His heart is racing, and he feels more than a little shaky and his tacky right hand is holding onto the door handle so tightly he’s surprised it hasn’t broken the plastic. His left arm is throbbing angrily from its recent wrenching out of Jared’s grasp too.

“C-O-N,” Jared spells out smugly once they’re back straight on the road, and Evan wonders if he’d rather Jared had clipped the car coming the other way just because then at least he would have to have ended this conversation. “Connie? Or Conrad?” he ponders, “Or Con- Wait; Holy shit, it wasn’t Connor Murphy was it?”

“No,” Evan snaps automatically as he glares out the window. It isn’t that he’s embarrassed by Connor’s name on his cast, but if there was ever a time when he wanted to deal with Jared’s teasing about it, it isn’t now. He doesn’t particularly want to get down to the reason that Connor signed his cast in the first place, either.

“Fucking liar,” Jared laughs, “Our friendly neighbourhood psychopath signed your cast?! And he didn’t like, try and stab you with the sharpie?!”

“Stop it,” Evan mutters, glaring at his own reflection in the wingmirror.

Jared either doesn’t hear him over his own laughter or doesn’t care, Evan suspects it’s the latter, because he just shakes his head and glances over, expression alight. “What the fuck happened to make Connor Murphy sign your cast? You’re _you _and he’s like- literally insane. Jesus Christ.” He breaks off to laugh and then pretends to calm himself. “Do I need to take you to the ER to get your arm fixed again?” he asks with faux concern, “Or to your therapist because there has got to be some trauma involved in having the school shooter using you for graffiti practice-”

“I said stop it,” Evan snaps, this time loudly and turns back to Jared. He isn’t good at glaring or fierce expressions, but he gives it a shot. “And- and stop calling him that. It isn’t nice.”

“Ooh someone’s touchy,” Jared snickers. “You two aren’t secret high school lovers or something, were you?”

“N-no, but still, it ... isn’t nice,” he argues lamely. “And anyway, he’s not like that.”

“He beats people up for fun, Evan,” Jared argues slowly as though he’s explaining basic math to a particularly slow eight year old.

“He’s just- he’s not a bad person,” Evan snaps just as the car stops at the lights more abruptly than could possibly be safe. It’s a sharp enough stop that his seatbelt ratchets, the fabric digging into his ribs as it holds him in his seat.

Jared scoffs a laugh. It resonates harshly with the handbrake as it grinds on. “He’s not just a bad person, Evan, he’s like, genuinely a fucking psychopath!”

“No, he isn’t! It’s just- it’s complicated, okay?”

Jared’s eyebrows shoot upwards. “Holy fuck, what has gotten into you?” he demands, and Evan thinks if he didn’t look quite so taken aback, he might almost look impressed. “One minute he’s shoved you over in the corridor and now you’re all ready to defend him?”

Evan shakes his head, frustrated and irritated and hurt by the knowledge that Jared had apparently seen him hit the lino the first day of school but just not cared enough to react. “He’s just- he’s in a really bad place at the moment, and I’m really worried he’s going to do something really stupid, okay!” he’s snapped before he’s realised what he’s saying. He clamps a hand to his mouth but what’s said has been said and he can’t take it back.

Jared stares at him for a moment and then coughs out a laugh.

“He’s a psychopath, Evan,” he snorts, and Evan doesn’t even understand what part of any of this is funny. “If he kills someone, it’s not going to be himself.” 

It hits like a punch to the gut, causes nausea to stir the same way, and when Evan’s eyes shoot back up to catch Jared’, he finds them crinkled with casual, careless amusement. They’re set in a face that makes it very clear Jared doesn’t give a flying fuck about what he’s just said, and the question of whether Jared would joke about his mental health too flashes briefly though his mind. He’s aware Jared doesn’t like Connor, that they’ve never gotten along, not even back in kindergarten, but it isn’t right for him to joke about such a serious subject matter, for him to disregard Evan’s very real fears for Connor’s safety like that.

His hands shake with rage more than anxiety or cold as he pulls his backpack onto his lap.

“I think I’ll walk from here,” he says coolly as he unbuckles his belt with one hand and opens the door with the other.

It isn’t until he’s out of the car and striding down the sidewalk that he realises Jared hadn’t even tried to stop him.

He’s angry enough that he finds he really doesn’t care.


	16. Rain does nothing to dampen the anger of an argument

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there, nearing the end!

The house is empty and quiet when Evan lets himself in, and the grey, overcast sky means he needs to turn the lights on inside despite sunset still being a few hours away. He kicks off his shoes in the hall and pads through to the kitchen in damp socks, ultimately deciding that leaving his coat dripping onto a towel on the lino floor there is better than leaving it dripping onto the shoes beneath to coat pegs in the hall.

He makes himself tea whilst he’s there; sits and shivers in a chair whilst he waits for the water to boil, then pours the water and battles against the lid of the milk with numb, stiff hands. Despite his shivering, he manages to get the mug to his room without ruining the carpet. It’s a small victory he didn’t think he’d manage.

Afterwards, when the tea is drunk and his wet clothes are hung over a radiator, Evan sits at his desk and tries to convince his brain to focus on any of the things he knows he’s meant to be doing. There is homework to be done, and scholarship essays to write, and college applications to research, and therapy letters to type, and so, like a person who is less of a mess than he really is, Evan gets out his books and pens and boots his laptop.

As he waits for it to wake, he stares out the window beside his desk and watches raindrops dance on the glass and race down the pane. The water-blurred people on the street below hurry for shelter with umbrellas fighting the wind and hoods up against the storm. Clearly, they mind the rain much more than Evan had. Not that that’s saying much, since he hadn’t really minded it at all. It had almost been a relief to be walking outside with the fresh air cool against his skin and the drum of the rain on his hood drowning out the din of anxiety in his brain. 

Gradually, the glass of the window beside the desk steams with the moisture of the wet clothing hanging on the radiator below, obscuring his view of the rain and the street and the droplets chasing each other down the pane. Evan tries not to care, tries to remind himself that he’s meant to be focusing on work even though his mind is busy thinking about so many other things.

It’s the quietening of the pitter-patter of droplets against glass that brings his head up again sometime later, and he frowns curiously at the glass for a moment then slowly stands and makes his way to the window.

When he wipes away the steam with the palm of his hand, he finds the rain has stopped, the clouds temporarily drained, and as he watches, the sun cuts its way through the stormy sky enough to light them into a brighter sort of grey. It looks almost hopeful. Tempting, in a way.

Evan stares longingly at it for a moment longer, then glances back at his desk. The paper sitting there is stubbornly blank, and the books are unopened, and the curser on his laptop flashes almost mockingly in an otherwise irritatingly empty word document. His eyes linger there, his mind torn between doing what is sensible and what he wants, and then he turns back to the desk and closes his laptop lid with a snap.

The hoodie is still a little damp as he shrugs it back on and his shoes are unpleasantly squelchy when he forces his feet back into them, but the chill of the lingering rainwater pressed against his skin is more than worth the possibility of the walk clearing his head a little. 

It’s still raining a little he realises when exits his house, and if he were in a better mood he would probably go back in and get his jacket, but he isn’t, and so he doesn’t. There’s also the matter that his coat is still drenched from his walk home so probably wouldn’t help all that much even if he was wearing it.

The cool air helps though, and the exercise provides an outlet for his restless, anxious energy, and while the rush of traffic in the distance doesn’t drown out the din in his head quite as much as the raindrops, it has a similar sort of effect.

Eventually, he ends up at the tree in the park near his house where he had sat with Connor nearly three weeks ago, and tired and wet from the rain, he slumps down against the trunk for a rest. The grass is damp and littered with fallen leaves and the bark is rough against his spine, but it doesn’t really matter. He curls his arms around his bent legs, his right hand holding the cast over his aching wrist.

It’s drier under the tree than not, enough leaves still linger on the branches to provide a little shelter from the drizzle, and Evan sits there, cold but blessedly less overwhelmed than he had been at home. He feels almost calm as he numbly watches the rain falling on the darkening field. Above it, the sky looks almost apocalyptic behind the trees, the setting sun burning the stormy clouds an angry red.

Overhead, the autumn leave rustle softly in the breeze and the rain patters softly on their crisp surfaces, and Evan sits there and listens and tries to order his eddying thoughts into some sort of sense. He needs a plan, he thinks, he needs to try to fix things before they get any worse.

Except, he thinks with a sigh, knowing he needs a plan is a lot easier than having a plan.

He doesn’t even know what he wants the outcome of that plan to be.

Cold and tired and more than a little damp, he curls himself a little smaller beneath the tree and rests his chin on his knees. Shakily, he lets out a sigh, and then, hurting and hopeless, he closes his eyes and allows his mind to drift.

It’s thunder that wakes him, and he’s briefly disorientated and more than a little panicked to find himself slumped against a tree in the middle of a darkened field. Heart in his throat, he struggles to push himself upright on stiff, shaky hands as he squints out over the field, trying to get a grasp of where he is and what has happened.

The park is where he is, the one near his house, which makes sense because he remembers walking there through the rain. He remembers sitting down against the tree for a break, too, and he remembers curling up against the cold as he considered the mess he has made of so many things. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

Obviously, he must have done, but he certainly hadn’t been trying to. That would definitely be a sign of how far he’s fallen. Maybe that he’d managed it accidentally is a sign of just how exhausted both emotionally and physically he is, though. Maybe it’s a sign that he really wasn’t up to a walk in the rain and a dissociation session beneath a tree.

Still a little disorientated by his unexpected nap, he runs a hand over his face, pushes his damp fringe away from his eyes. The hand is uncoordinated and stiff and trembling almost uselessly. The rest of him is shaking, too, he realises after a moment, not his usual relentless restless twitches or anxious tics, but violent tremors he can’t blame on anything but the cold.

Because he is cold, he realises as he wakes a little more, completely and utterly freezing, and more than a little damp. The rain is heavier than it was before, hammering down loudly on the path that dissects the field and dripping through the late leaves still clinging to the branches above his head. The wind is stronger, too, each gust bending the trees that skirt the field and setting their leave a jitter. Behind them, where before the sun was burning the clouds, there is now nothing but darkness.

Spurred by anxiety and adrenaline, his heart resumes its thrumming in his throat. He isn’t all that scared of the dark itself, nor being out alone at night, but it is clearly much later now than it was when he left the house, and he’s very aware that, depending on the time, he might be in an awful lot of trouble with his mom. She would understandably be less than happy to come home from class to find the house dark and cold and her teenager missing. His coat dripping onto the kitchen floor isn’t going to help the situation either. 

With a stiff hand, he reaches into his pocket for his cell, and it isn’t until his numb fingers are trapped between the cold fabric of his damp khakis and his marginally warmer skin, that he realises his cell isn’t there. It’s on his desk. Or maybe on his bed. He doesn’t entirely know.

Evan swears under his breath and squints out over the dark fields, trying to get a grasp of just how late it is and how much trouble he’s going to be in, and it’s only when he actually steadies himself enough to really focus on the darkened park that he realises he might not be in quite as much trouble as he’d feared.

Although sun that had once red behind the trees has fully set and there aren’t any cars running along the road outside the gate, the patchy set of lights that edge the path through the park are still on. The few bulbs that still work are glowing warmly, brightening the heavy stream of raindrops that fall by, and Evan lets out a shaky sigh of relief because he’s spent enough summer evenings wandering the park to know for sure they got out at 10 pm.

His mom’s classes end at 10pm too, and unless she stays behind to ask questions or work in the 24-hour library next to the college, she’s usually home by twenty past. If he hurries, he should still have just enough time to get home and into the shower before she returns even if was 10 pm.

He thinks he should have enough time, anyway. 

He really, really hopes he does.

The relief that his unexpected nap might not have caused quite as much of a problem as he’d first feared unwinds and his heart calms a little. Tried and weak with relief, he sags against the trunk and rests his head back against the bark. Sighing shakily, he rubs a hand over his face, brushing a rogue droplet from his forehead and rubbing sleep from his itchy eyes, and then looks out at the downpour as he summons the energy to stand.

He’s tired, physically and emotionally exhausted, and had he not had a reason to get home, he might genuinely have considered just accepting the grass beneath the tree as his bed for the night. He’d certainly have lingered there a little longer, anyway, allowed himself to wake a little more and maybe waited in the branches’ shelter for the storm to pass.

As much as he would prefer that, his mom will be home at some point, and pretty soon judging by the darkness, and so he sighs and slowly, pushes himself to his feet. He takes a deep breath to steady his head once he’s up, his hand pressed against the trunk for balance, and then, when the dark spots have cleared from his vision, he darts out into the downpour.

The lights are on inside the house when he returns home and Evan stops and stares and wheezes a shaky swear under his breath.

He tries to close the front door quietly behind himself, but his plan on going up to his room and changing out of his sodden hoodie and dripping khakis before his mom sees is foiled when she calls out from the living room.

“Evan, is that you?” She sounds concerned, and her expression matches when she appears in the doorway. Her anxious blue eyes scan him briefly, taking in his sodden hoodie and dripping hair and the water droplets falling from his fingertips onto the scuffed lino of their hallway. “Where have you _been_?” she demands, sounding confused and a little distressed which is a good discription of how he’s feeling too.

He frowns at the apron hanging over her sweats and pasta sauce on her cuff, trying to understand why she’s home and changed and cooking dinner when she shouldn’t be home at all. She’s meant to be at class and the clock on the wall agrees.

It is late though, not as late as it could be, but late enough that he understands why his mom sounds concerned. It’s been long enough since he left home that he understands why he’s quite so frozen too.

“Why aren’t you at class?” he asks before he’s really thought it through.

For a second, him mom frowns like she’s trying to understand his question, and then her eyebrows raise and she scoffs like she can’t quite believe he’s just asked her that.

Which is fair, really; it isn’t her who’s just stumbled in from the rain at nine o’clock at night.

“Um, maybe because I got a voicemail from Dr Sherman’s office asking if there was a reason you hadn’t turned up for your appointment,” she explains, her tone suddenly more irritated and confused than concerned. “So, I tried calling to check you were okay, but apparently you don’t answer your cell these days.”

Evan stiffens a little, his shoulders tense beneath the soggy hoodie. “Oh, I- I forgot it. It’s upstairs.” 

“Upstairs, but-” She breaks off and sighs harshly. Her expression is awfully frustrated as she surveys his drowned appearance and the puddle rapidly forming at his feet. “What have you been doing, Evan? You’re soaked to the skin.”

Evan finds his spine curling defensively under her scrutiny. “I just went for a walk.”

“In the middle of a storm?!”

Under her exasperated gaze, Evan shrugs, shoulders jerking violently. “It wasn’t raining when I left,” he mutters to the lino, folding his arms defensively over his chest. His damp clothes press uncomfortably against his goosepimpled skin and his heart hammers against his ribs with enough force he can feel it through his shirt.

“What?” Heidi’s eyebrows pinch somehow further. “How long have you been out? It’s been raining for hours!”

“I lost track of time.”

“What do you mean you lost track of time?” she exclaims, but before he has time to even start to think of an answer, she’s sighed harshly and turned away. “I just don’t know what to do with you at the moment, Evan,” she admits after a second, sounding frustrated and upset and angry and so, so lost all at once. She sounds just like Evan feels and he hates that.

She shouldn’t sound like that because of him.

“You don’t need to do anything, mom. I’m fine,” he tries, in a vain attempt to reassure her. His words come out too hard, though, and they’re based off so little substance he knows his mom has little to no chance of believing them. The lie is angry and opaque like the glass of a fractured bathroom window and when he looks up, he finds his mom gawking at him with wide, red, hurting eyes. They’re wet with more frustration than upset. 

“Will you stop lying to me, Evan!” she snaps, her voice cracking and awfully loud in the otherwise silent hallway. Evan flinches, finds himself staring wide eyed at his soggy sneakers. “You’re not fine! You’re not-” She breaks off and looks away with wild, blue eyes and runs a hand forcefully through her blonde hair. It’s messy enough that Evan thinks she might have been doing so for a while. “You don’t sleep! You barely eat. You don’t go to therapy-”

“I’ve skipped once!” Evan retorts defensively.

“Twice! You didn’t go last week either.”

“I forgot!”

“Bullshit, Evan,” Heidi objects, her tone suddenly harsh enough that Evan finds himself stiffening as though bracing for an attack. It’s an attack he probably deserves, but it isn’t one wants.

His pulse throbs in his throat, much too quickly, much too loud, and he feels almost lightheaded with adrenaline and an anger he cannot really place. He isn’t even sure who he’s angry at, himself for being such an open book or his mom for bringing up what she’s seen, or if he’s even genuinely angry at all. He isn’t sure if, really, he’s just terrified of what happens when his mom finds out just how broken he really is. He doesn’t want to know what happens when she does find that out. 

“Yeah, well, a lot of things people say are bullshit!” he deflects heatedly, suddenly offensive. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you!”

Heidi almost flinches, as though she hadn’t expected him to snap back. It’s fair, he supposes; usually he chooses flight over fight.

She recovers quickly though and lifts her head, standing firm against him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should know what a lie sounds like, you tell them frequently enough!”

“I lie?” she exclaims, and Evan flinches at her humourless, frustrated sort of laugh. “Have you even _heard _yourself lately? All you do is say you’re fine when clearly you’re not.”

“How would you know?” he snaps back, leaning at her. He’s shaking, he realises distantly, but more with anger and panic than cold. “You never see me! You’re never fucking here!”

His mom’s face falls. He sees hurt and upset and anger flash through her eyes in quick succession. “Hey, I’m trying my best, Evan!” she protests heatedly. “I am trying so hard to help you! Do you know how hard that is with you at the moment?” Behind the anger there’s pain in her tone and it’s pain that Evan caused.

It hurts him to hear it and that only makes him feel worse. It hurts that she seems so sure he needs help, too. He’s a mess, he knows, but he hates that she knows that too. Is openly admitting how much of a failure he is

“I don’t need help, mom!” he snaps back, and what he actually means is he doesn’t deserve her help but there’s no way he can say that. “I don’t need fixing! I’m not broken!”

His mom’s eyes go wide, shock and hurt and horror etched onto her face. “Evan, I have never said that!”

Evan scoffs harshly. 

“You think it though,” he argues, his words irate, so fast even he can barely understand what he’s saying. “I know you do, you-”

“Evan, that just isn’t true!”

“-you make me go to therapy! You make me take drugs!”

Despite his anger and sodden clothing, Heidi’s hands find his shoulders. They hold firm to his upper arms when he tries to shrug them off. “Evan, please-” she begs. “I’m just trying to help you!”

“You don’t need to!”

“I do, Evan, I’m your mother! It’s my job to take care of you!” she reasons, exasperated.

“Yeah, I know and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such a burden-”

“You’re not a-”

“-I’m sorry I ruined your life!” Evan shouts.

Heidi freezes, and pales, and her hands loosen just a little from his arms. She looks distraught.

“You didn’t- You’re the only … you’re the one good thing that has ever happened to me, Evan,” she says, and she looks so shocked, so upset, so heartbroken by what he’s said. It hurts his heart to shrug her hands from his arms, but he knows it’s for the best.

“Well, you have a funny way of showing it,” he scoffs harshly, angrily, even though he isn’t even sure what he’s saying is true. His head and heart are too much of a mess for him to work out what he believes.

Half of him knows his mom loves him, that she wants to help him get better, that she’s just busy with work and school to keep the bills paid and a roof over their heads and help them towards a brighter future. A part of him doesn’t think he’s worth that effort though, just he’s too much of a mess, too much of a waste of space to deserve her love. Some of him knows she’s only doing what she does out of duty, that she’s only there for him because she’s obliged to be, that she doesn’t love him but is stuck with him anyway because she made the mistake of getting pregnant at 22 with a baby she didn’t plan to have.

Evan doesn’t know what to believe, but in that moment, he settles on the latter.

His sodden shoes squeak against the wooden floor of their hallway as he finally finds the energy to flee.

“Evan!”

A small, strong hand grabs his arm again as he pushes past, stopping him in his track and pulling him back around. Instinctively, he flinches violently as her hand latches, catching his left arm just above the elbow in a desperate attempt to stop him as he fled, but the indignant yelp that follows is more from anger than the pain. Jerkily, he tries to shrug her from his arm and push her away, but the hand is firm and tight and holding on so hard it almost hurts. 

Her blue eyes are wet and wide and pained when they find his.

“Evan, please, I just want to help. I don’t want to lose you again,” she begs, and maybe she’s telling the truth and maybe she isn’t; Evan doesn’t know. The lines between reality and what his brain says to be true are blurred, the whole picture opaque and distorted. He knows he’s a mess though, and he knows he's a burden, and he knows his mom will be better off without him even though she says she won’t.

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re a little late,” he snaps icily.

This time, his arm comes free from her grasp when he pulls.

Heidi stares for a moment, as though his response has caught her out, and then her mouth opens and closes and her expression crumples. Although Evan doesn’t know what she thought he was going to say, he knows it hadn’t been that.

Before she has time to react, he’s bolted up the stairs to his room, leaving her standing alone and still on the sodden floor of their hallway.

He ends up sitting against his slammed bedroom door, his knees bent up and his arms hugging his chest and his exhausted, bruised eyes tightly closed and burning hotly with tears he doesn’t try to prevent. They fall unstopped, forming salty trails over his pale cheeks and then dripping down onto his rain-soaked khakis as he sobs. For a long while, he sits there, feeling angry and hopeless and alone and sick to the stomach with the knowledge that somewhere else in the house, his mom is almost certainly crying too.

It hurts his heart to know that her pain, her heartbreak, is entirely his fault.


	17. To hold a baby bird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter takes me over 100,000 words, and although I don't hugely like this fic any more, I'm still kinda proud of myself for getting there. 
> 
> Also, the chapter count has changed again, go me and my fickle chapter break placement.
> 
> Enjoy!

Tuesday morning dawns cool and grey with the first dew of the year laying heavy on the grass. Evan’s almost surprised it isn’t frosty outside their front door, the chill seeping out from the icy atmosphere that still lingers inside despite Heidi having made herself scarce before he’s even managed to crawl from his bed.

He readies himself for school in a daze, motions mechanical as he dresses and brushes his teeth and attempts to calm his hair because his exhausted, rattled mind is so very far away. The only fragment of home he remembered afterwards was the painful guilty clench his gut had given as he’d noticed the shakily written note resting on top of the his recently filled lunch box in the kitchen. He hadn’t even taken the food. He hadn’t felt worthy of it.

The walk to school and through the building to homeroom passes in as much as a blur as the early morning before it, and when his eyes search out Connor’s desk upon entering the classroom, it’s more out of habit than conscious choice.

The urge to cry at the sight of the empty doodle-covered desk is less out of habit, and Evan has to actively fight the impulse to give up and break down entirely because he’s just so tired, so completely and utterly done that his emotions are shot to pieces. He doesn’t cry though; he walks to his desk instead and sits down and tries to ignore the jabs of worry and concern and fear that Connor’s missing for a reason much more permanent than just not wanting to go to school that morning. 

With restless fingers, he ruins his cast as he sits there, his too short fingernails picking at the loose fibreglass near his thumb because he’s run out of nails to bite and his cuticles are enough of a mess already. He doesn’t even try to listen to the morning announcements, and even if he had, his brain is entirely off kilter and the world sounds much too distant, much too warped to make sense. It’s as though he’s listening through a window, the clarity of the words lost as they pass through the glass. His heart is throbbing much too loudly to hear Mrs Fenton’s words over, anyway.

His thoughts eddy and flit as he sits there, darting between worrying about Connor, and his mom, and their finances, and how much of a mess he has made of so, so many things.

He thinks about the mess he is as he sits there too, thinks about the ways to fix that.

There’s only one way he knows of that’ll help for sure.

Alana corners him in the free moment between the end of register being taken and the end of home room, and she stands beside his desk and beams down at him as she tells him when and where the first meeting of her study group is and that she’ll see him there. Nodding numbly like a dashboard ornament, Evan agrees. He has no intention of meeting her and the five other students whose names he recognises but can’t really place in the library at half four that afternoon, but he’s just too exhausted to argue.

“Great!” she exclaims, “This is going to be really good; I just know it!”

Evan kind of expects her to leave afterwards, except she doesn’t. She ligers for a second and then asks if he’s feeling okay because he looks a little peaky, and Evan knows he looks a mess, he’d caught a glimpse of his reflection that morning as he’d brushed his teeth, so he’s aware he’s taken on an unhealthy sort of pallor and the skin beneath his eyes is bruised and dark. He knows his hair is not styled as perfectly as it normally is too, an unfortunate result of curling up in bed last night with it still damp from the rain. It dried ruffled against the pillow as he tried and failed to find the blissful nothingness of unconsciousness, resulting in a disaster even water and a comb in the morning hadn’t been able to truly tame. 

“I’m fine,” he tells her, too exhausted to even stammer and stutter and reword his sentences halfway through, “just tired.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, a frown on her brow and a look of doubt in her eyes, and then proceeds to give him a good five-minute run down on her own past struggles with falling asleep and the routine she’s found for herself to solve that. Evan pretends to listen, pretends to care about her suggestion of lavender scented shower gel and warm milk swirled with honey, and tries his best to nod along in the expected sort of places. In reality, he’s only heard about three words she’s said because his brain is much, much too busy worrying about everything else to listen. 

Evan doesn’t remember the walk from homeroom to the chemistry lab, but he knows he skirted the lockers all the way there, his shoulders hunched and his eyes to the floor and his cast held protectively against his chest.

He remembers arriving in the biology lab though, because his stomach gives an almost nauseating swirl of relief and a fraction of the tension releases from his aching shoulders because Connor is already there, perched on a lab stool in the far corner of the room. He looks tired and pale and smaller than he actually is, hunched over with his back so curved it must be painful, but he’s there and alive and that’s definitely more than something.

He doesn’t look up as the too loud stream of rowdy students enter; his head stays bowed and his pained, mismatched eyes don’t leave his desk.

Evan almost considers going over to him, considers summoning the courage to ask if he’s okay despite it being very clearly isn’t, but they’re not alone in the room, and he isn’t sure he would be able to find the courage to start _that_ conversation even if they were.

Instead, he settles himself in his usual seat, tries not to care when Jared sits across the room and downright refuses to even look at him, and spends most of biology picking at his nails and trying and failing to concentrate. It’s a pretty big sign he’s mentally not in a good place when his homework comes back with a C- emblazoned on the top, and he isn’t sure whether to cry at his mark or laugh because, really, in the grand scheme of things, his grades are completely and utterly irrelevant.

He doesn’t laugh though, and he doesn’t cry, instead he sits at his desk in a silent sort of turmoil and focuses on trying not to hyperventilate he waits for the discussion on assignments to be over and the remainder of the lesson to end. 

Since it’s a little too cold and much too rainy for Evan to retreat to his usual tree at lunch break, and he’s much, much too on edge to go to the cafeteria, he heads to the hopefully deserted IT suite on the third floor instead. It’s likely to get less empty as the year progresses, he’s learnt so during previous years, but for now it’s early enough in the term that most people are more likely to be socialising than working in their lunch hours.

Besides, the IT suite on the first floor is much better equipped for working in than the one two floors above; the computers there are newer and faster and work well enough they don’t freeze if too many tabs are loading in Chrome or if Word and Excel and Paint all get opened at the same time, so anyone who does want to use a computer at lunch would normally be there.

To his dismay, Evan finds the IT suite on the third floor isn’t empty when he arrives, and he’s just about to turn around and flee like he usually would when he realises who it is who’s there. Unnoticed by Connor, he lingers momentarily in the doorway, unsure of whether to proceed and make the most of the unexpected opportunity, or just to follow the advice of his anxiety and run. He’d blame his choice of stepping into the room on the Xanax rather than courage if he’d bothered to take it that morning.

“Um, hi,” he starts awkwardly, just as the door swings closed with a dull thud. Evan cringes, more at his weirdly pitched voice than the slam, just as Connor glances up from his phone. His expression morphs from surprise to confusion to anger so quickly it almost blurs.

A cold, tight feeling makes itself at home in Evan’s already churning gut when Connor’s mismatched eyes finally find his.

“What part of ‘fuck off’ do you not fucking understand?” he seethes, glaring furiously over the screen of the computer he’s sat before. Evan doesn’t think the screen is even on, and he wonders if Connor is sheltering from the rest of the student body, too.

Alarmed by the acidity in Connor’s tone, he shakes his head violently. “I didn’t- I wasn’t- I wasn’t looking for you, I just- I come here sometimes, you know that; I was here- here that first-”

“I don’t fucking care what your excuse for being here is. Just fuck off,” Connor interrupts angrily. His voice echoes loudly. Even Evan’s racing, throbbing heart seems quiet and calm in comparison as he stands there and stares and tires to think of absolutely anything to say. 

“Fine then, I’ll go.” Connor stands so abruptly his chair briefly threatens to topple before instead scraping back against the varnished wooden boards below. Evan tries and fails not to flinch at both the grating sound and Connor’s acrid tone. His sweaty, shaky hands clasp at his shirt hem so tightly he fears for the fabric.

“N-no Connor, you don’t have to,” Evan cries back just as Connor is flinging his tatty satchel over a bony shoulder. He steps forwards, towards Connor. “I’ll- I’ll go, I’ll just- you were here first a-and so I can’t- you should-”

Connor cuts over his stammered explanation with an angry sort of sound that might be a laugh. “Fucking hell,” he scoffs as he pushes past, and Evan realises very suddenly that instead of leaving like Connor had wanted, he’d just stuttered awkwardly in the middle of the room and wrung his shirt in his sweaty hands.

It’s a very him response, and one Connor is understandably irritated by.

“Connor, I’m sorry, I just-”

“Is there actually something wrong with you?” Connor demands as turns abruptly. His mismatched eyes are fierce, and his expression is set. “Like, did that fall damage your brain or are you naturally this much of a fucking mess?”

Evan recoils as though burnt, and for the briefest of seconds, Connor cringes too. His livid expression slips just before turns away again, leaving the room without another sound except for the thud of his boots and the bang of the door as it closes.

Hurt, Evan doesn’t follow. Instead, he stands there in the suddenly too big IT room, an ache in his heart and a heaviness in his gut as Connor’s words cycle round and round in his mind like water circling a drain. What he has said is fair enough, Evan knows, he’s been a mess for a while, for even longer than Connor has known, but it still hurts to hear it said out loud. No one has even been quite that blunt with him about his mental health before.

He deserves it, of course, but it still isn’t nice to hear.

He also knows why Connor has said what he had said, though. Connor isn’t cruel, he doesn’t say things to hurt for no reason; he lashes out when he’s feeling attacked and angry and when he’s hurting too.

Evan focuses on that, pushes his own hurt aside and does exactly what he should have done just over two weeks ago when Connor had yelled and seethed and ran from the room with a letter that wasn’t his crumpled in his fist.

“Connor, wait-” Evan calls as he darts after him into the hallway.

Connor doesn’t wait, and he doesn’t look back at the sounds of his name. He continues down the hallways, his boots heavy on the lino, and Evan, before he can really think about what he’s doing, has ran after him and reached out to grab his arm.

Connor flinches violently at the contact just as Evan had done when his mom had grabbed him the night before. Unlike his mom though, Evan lets go.

“What?” he demands, stopping so suddenly Evan very nearly walks into him and turning abruptly round to face him. “What do you want from me?”

Evan forces himself not to wither under the frosty glare.

“I just- I just wanted to say I’m sorry you got into trouble for helping me and- and- and-” he stops for a fraction of a second, takes the time to focus his eddying thoughts and faltering tongue. Connor stares at him with pained mismatched eyes, his expression a twisted mess of anger and hurt and incredulity but Evan presses on regardless. “And I just wanted to ask if you’re okay. Well, no, I know- I know you’re not okay because- and I just- I’m worried. About you, Connor, is what- what I’m trying to say.”

Connor just stares for a moment as though he can’t quite understand what Evan has just said, and then scoffs. He doesn’t storm off or swear or yell, though, and Evan counts that as progress. “Why the fuck are you worried?” he half asks, half demands.

“Because-”

“No, scrap that, why the fuck do you even care?”

Evan almost wants to tell Connor that he cares because he deserves to be cared about. Because despite his anger and his defensive attacks, he isn’t a bad person. He isn’t going to even try to start that argument again with Connor though; he knows it would be futile and he knows Connor isn’t really listening anyway.

“Because I know how much it hurts when no one cares,” he says instead, trying hard to keep his tone level and calm and to some extent succeeding.

Connor scoffs again, this time in irritation. “I’m not like you, Evan! There’s a reason no one cares!”

“That’s not-”

“Will you just fuck-”

“Connor, please, you need help!” Evan shouts over the top of his argument with enough force he surprises the both himself and Connor. He feels almost out of breath afterwards. Or maybe that’s just due to the anxiety tightening his chest and the fact his heart is fluttering much too quickly to be all that productive. 

A stunned moment passes, and then trough the silence, Connor scoffs nastily.

“_I_ need help?” he growls, voice dangerous and eyes fierce. Evan has to force himself not to step back. “It’s not me who tried to kill himself jumping from a fucking tree, is it?”

Evan’s ears hum.

The whitewashed corridor with walls lines with industrial grey lockers suddenly feel much too big and much too cold.

He flinches violently back, stumbling a little on weak legs and the fingers of his right hand wrap tightly around the cast he has instinctively drawn to his stomach. The limb inside aches, throbbing in time with his racing heart just like that day little over five weeks before, and once again his head is spinning and his breaths are short and sharp and useless.

Just like before, Connor is staring at him with those mismatched eyes.

He looks as though he can’t quite believe what he has said, and Evan can’t either. While it’s true, neither of them have ever quite so bluntly said what had happened before. No one has. Not even Evan has fully accepted what happened that day.

“Evan?”

Evan flinches round at the voice he knows but is too distracted to place to find Alana standing a little way down the corridor from him. She’s hovering just outside the door to the IT suite with her arms full of books and an expression that’s caught somewhere between shock and horror and concern.

There is not an ounce of doubt in Evan’s mind that she hasn’t overheard exactly what Connor had said.

Connor seems to realise this too.

“Fuck.” His spidery hands reach his mattered hair and his wild, wide eyes flicker between Evan and Alana and back again for a fraction of a second before he swears again and bolts down the corridor.

Evan lets him go this time, too busy staring at Alana and the achingly concerned expression she’s wearing as he tries to comprehend what has happened through the thundering of his brain. He isn’t sure how long he stays there, whether it’s seconds or minutes, but then Alana takes a step towards him, her lips moving but the words lost in the humming of his ears, and Evan finds himself fleeing too. 

Evan’s in the bathroom.

He’s ended up there a lot in the past few weeks he realises.

The floor of the stall is cold and maybe a little damp which he would probably find disgusting if he wasn’t much, much too focused on other more important things such as Connor and Alana and remembering how to breathe.

The door of the bathroom opens and closes and Evan would thank a God if he believed in one that, unlike most of the times he’s been in almost this exact position recently, he’s had the forethought to hide himself in a stall and lock the door behind him. Despite being locked in a cubical and hidden from the view of whoever has come in, he holds his breath and wills his throbbing heart to quieten because if it’s really as loud as it sounds to his too sensitive ears, then they’re sure to hear it even from outside. He really doesn’t want to have to deal with someone asking him if he’s alright through the too short chipwood door.

He’d much rather they didn’t notice him at all, and maybe they won’t, people don’t tend to so why would now be any different, why-

“Evan?”

He stays still, tries not to breathe or cry or vomit or pass out and hopes hopes hopes if he doesn’t reply Alana will go, and they won’t have to have the conversation she is 100 % there to have.

“Evan, I know you’re in there. Are you okay?”

A wet sort of exhale escapes Evan’s chapped lips. It sounds much too close to a sob for him to tell himself it isn’t, and he hopes to God Alana hasn’t heard.

“You’re not allowed in here,” he manages to wheeze in a voice that’s wet and chocked and makes it sound for sure like he’s both crying and suffocating, and in all honesty, he isn’t sure he isn’t.

Alana doesn’t reply instantly, and in the pause, he can almost hear the frown he knows she’s pulling. “Can you open the door?” she asks eventually, tone soft and cautious.

Evan swallows. “I’m- I’m peeing.”

Alana sighs in a way that sounds a little sad. “No, you’re having a panic attack,” she says frankly, and her words sound sad too.

Evan isn’t sure if it’s the understanding he can hear in her tone, or the fact she doesn’t sound like she’s judging him at all that causes the remaining fragments of his emotional barricade to shatter and a phlegmy half sob, half choked groan escapes his lips. He leans his head back against the wall with a soft thud. It hurts a little, but maybe it’ll knock some sense into him. His arm hurts too he realises numbly, the sting of scratched skin from just below his elbow joining the ever-present ache inside. It’s somehow simultaneously grounding and distracting.

He focuses on the former, on grounding himself with the sting, and the chilly dampness of the tiles, and the pressure of the pipes against his spine, and the soft, gentle hum of Alana’s voice as she counts her breaths.

Evan doesn’t remember her starting, but he follows her lead until his lungs have ceased their useless spasming and his head isn’t feeling quite so fuzzy anymore.

“Sorry,” he manages to eventually wheeze around the thickness of tears in his throat. There are tears on his cheeks, too, he realises belatedly, warm, salty droplets of overwhelming despair that have carved warm, tacky trails over his pale skin. They’ve dripped from his chin onto the dark grey hoodie he is yet to return. He wipes his cheeks them with his sleeve, clearing the droplets away only for more to take their places.

“It’s okay,” Alana comforts softly from the other side of the door. Her voice sounds lower than before as though perhaps she’s kneeling. Or squatting more likely, he realises, since he’s pretty sure Alana Beck wouldn’t ever voluntarily come into contact with the grimy, pee-sticky tiles of the boys’ bathroom floor. No one does, if they can help it.

If they’re not broken, messes of humans anyway. 

“Do you have your medication with you? You normally have some, right?” 

Evan shakes his head, almost too distracted to wonder why she knows that, and then realises she can’t see him. “No, but I’m- it’s okay, I’m- I’m okay.”

“Okay,” says Alana, and then the room goes kind of quiet for a moment save for the gurgling of the plumbing and the dripping of a tap. It’s a little awkward, Evan eventually realises. Uncomfortable. The air in the bathroom is much too heavy, too weighty with questions Evan knows for sure will be asked. Alana is like that. She’ll want to know.

“Can you unlock the door now?”

The question is almost tentative, encouraging, and Evan sighs and finds himself pushing himself shakily to his feet. His knees buckle a little and his head spins enough that he has to momentarily brace himself against the wall.

When he finally opens the door, Alana is leaning against the wall right outside, and more out of wanting something to do other than stand and talk to her, he goes to splash his face at the basin. In the mirror, Alana watches him like a hawk.

“I don’t want to pry, but-”

“Well don’t.”

Alana sighs a little, fixes him with a funny sort of look. Her footsteps echo awfully loudly as she crosses the room to join him. 

“Does anyone else know it wasn’t an accident?” she asks gently, and Evan knows she’s still watching him, but he keeps his eyes firmly fixed on his own reflection. His gaze skims over his blotchy skin and puffy eyes and instead seeks out the fading scar on his forehead. It isn’t all that obvious, fairly small and all but covered by his hair, but he knows it’s there. He knows why it’s there, as well.

He swallows, and then shakes his head. 

“No, just- just Connor,” he admits quietly. “He found me. Under the tree. He… he saved my life.” 

Alana nods. “He’s a good person, deep down.”

“Yeah, I know,” Evan croaks. He gives his face another wipe with his sleeve. Alana watches him, and then sighs.

“You need to tell someone, Evan,” she says gently. Her tone is soft and sympathetic but firmer than he would like.

Evan stiffens a little. The basin feels cold beneath his hands.

“Why? I’m not … going to try again,” he protests awkwardly.

Beside him, Alana gives a small, sad smile. “Evan, I’m pleased you’ve said that, but you still need to tell someone. Has what made you try even changed?”

Evan almost sighs, because although the answer to that question is yes, everything has changed, it certainly hasn’t changed for the better. When he said he wasn’t going to try again, he wasn’t lying though, it’s not like he has plans to try again. Not firm ones anyway. He hadn’t even meant to do anything the first time. It just. Sort of happened.

“Alana, just- I didn’t actually- it wasn’t like how Connor said,” he explains a little urgently. His voice is quiet and kind of wet still, but it holds steadier than he expects it to.

Beside him Alana frowns. “Evan-”

“No, no, really. It wasn’t. I didn’t climb the tree to- to- like, to you know. I’ve- I’ve climbed that tree so many times, I used to eat my lunch sitting in it, but I just- that day I climbed higher than I usually do, and then when the branch just broke and… and I fell… and I was hanging from the branch below, I just-” He breaks off, swallows, catches Alana’s eye in the mirror. She’s watching him with a quiet sort of sadness, and for once, she doesn’t interrupt. She’s just listening, and somehow, he finds strength in that.

“I could have pulled myself up,” he admits to her, “I- like- I’m strong enough to, but I don’t know. I just… didn’t. I didn’t want to. It- stuff’s hard, and the answer just seemed so easy, you know. So- so I didn’t. I just- I let go.”

“Oh, Evan, I’m sorry,” Alana says quietly, and she reaches out to take his hand. He flinches but doesn’t quite pull away. She doesn’t let go instantly either despite his palm being disgustingly wet. “But just because you didn’t plan it doesn’t make it any better. You still let go.”

Despite knowing he should agree, Evan swallows and shrugs and looks away. Looking back, he knows he hadn’t been well even though he hadn’t climbed that tree with the intention of not climbing back down. He remembers how he’d sat up in the branches with a heart that didn’t care if he fell because if he did, then he did, what would happen would happen. He’d decided that if he died, then he’d died, and that was okay.

“Do you still feel that way?”

“No.”

“Evan.” Alana’s brown eyes are sad under furrowed brows when Evan’s flick up to meet them and he knows for sure his protest had been much too sharp, much too quick to ring true.

He sighs and tries to smile in a way that looks reassuring. “Alana, it’s okay. I’m not going do anything stupid.”

“You still need to tell someone.”

“Who? Mom has enough to worry about already.”

“She’d still want to know,” Alana insists gently but firmly, and Evan fights the urge to scoff. Which maybe isn’t fair to her, really. His mom probably would want to know; he just doesn’t want her to. He doesn’t want her to have to deal with it. 

He shakes his head. “It’d break her heart,” he says thickly.

For a moment, Alana just looks at him, her soft brown eyes searching, and then she sighs. “Yeah, I know it will. I know it will hurt her to know what you tried to do, but Evan,” she pauses, waits for him to look up, “but it would hurt her so, so much more if she lost you. It would break her.”

Evan stares at his cast through bleary eyes and wills himself not to cry. He doesn’t think he succeeds entirely, or even partially, because very suddenly, he finds himself being pulled into Alana’s arms. It should be awkward, but isn’t. She hugs him tightly, and after a moment, he hugs her back. “I just- I felt so alone,” he finds himself admitting, and his voice comes out so much wetter than he had thought it would. His face is wetter too, tears blurring his vision and tickling his cheeks.

“You’re not alone, Evan,” Alana tells him, her voice strong and firm and almost too loud because she’s right beside his ear. “You’re not alone and you need to remember that, okay?”

Evan sniffles and nods into her shoulder.

“And, Evan, you’re not alone in feeling that way either, you know?” she continues softly, and she’s meant what she’s said comfortingly but Evan freezes in her arms.

“Yeah, I know,” he croaks wetly, wriggling his way out of her arms.

A flicker of confusion crosses Alana’s brow before she understands what he’s saying. “Hey, no, that’s not what I meant,” she tuts, taking hold of his hand again. “Your feelings aren’t any less valid. I just meant that I think a lot of people are lonely nowadays, and that’s maybe something we need to try and work on as a community.

“The world is so big and busy and hopeless, and even with technology keeping us connected, it’s so easy to feel lost in it all. It’s so easy to feel alone and like you don’t really matter, like the world would just carry on without you and no one would notice if you did just disappear. But the thing is you do matter. Everyone matters, even if they don’t believe they do. I think sometimes we just need some help to stop and look around and find the people who are close to us to see that.”

Evan considers what she’s said, sniffles, rubs at his eyes. “You’re better than my therapist,” he announces with a wet, chocked sort of laugh.

Alana smiles sadly, too, and then sighs. “I saw one for a while last year, actually,” she admits quietly.

“You did?”

“Yeah.” Her brow puckers a little as though she’s weighing up whether she wants to say what she’s about to say or not. “I’m- I know I seem like I’ve got it all sorted,” she starts eventually, “but … I put a lot of pressure on myself, more than I need to because I always think I need to do better to prove myself.

“I’m not a popular person, I don’t exactly have many friends, and I’m not good at sports or music or art or drama, and I’m not funny or… but I’m clever, I do well academically. So, I decided to focus on that; on getting the best grades and doing the most extracurriculars and the most volunteering hours because it felt like I needed to be good at something. It felt like I wouldn’t be worth anything if I wasn’t. like there wouldn’t be much point to me.

“Talking to someone about it helped,” she says, sounding tired but sure. “It was exhausting, like emotionally one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but it helped me address why I felt that way. I’m still trying to accept that I don’t have to be the best at everything to be a worthy human, and I still put a lot of pressure on myself to do well, but I’m better than I was. I’m getting there.” A small, half sad, half proud smile finds her lips, and Evan can’t help smiling too.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Thanks.” Her hand squeezes his and then her sad smile slips into a conflicted sort of frown. “Listen, Evan, I know you said you’re not going to do anything, but… either you need to tell your mom or someone else who can help you what happened, or I’m going to have to report it. I really don’t want to do that, but it would be irresponsible not to.”

Evan looks down at his casted arm and nods. He doesn’t find himself with a too tight chest and a racing heart like he knows he normally would if faced with such an ultimatum. He wonders if he’s just too tired. “I’ll tell her.”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight,” he promises.

“Thank you,” she says, clearly relieved, and Evan wonders if she hasn’t considered that he could just be saying that to get her off his back.

Maybe he is.

Even he doesn’t really know what he wants any more. Well, no, he does. He actually wasn’t to just disappear, or not existed in the first place because then he wouldn’t be alive, and his mom wouldn’t be upset. Best of both worlds there.

“What did you mean when you said Connor needed help?”

Evan sighs and turns away to lean back against the basin. He tries to think of how he can put the Connor situation into words. “He’s… just not doing great right now either.”

Alana tilts her head. “In the same way as you?” she asks cautiously. 

Evan shrugs despite knowing the answer. “No, it’s not that,” he settles on eventually. Alana opens her mouth as though to reply but he gets in first. “I, look, Alana, it isn’t … it’s not my stuff to tell.”

“No,” she agrees, looking a little frustrated, “but you still need to tell someone if you think he’s in danger of harming himself. A teacher maybe, or Mrs Flint, or I can ask Zoe for her Mom’s number or-”

Evan knows his eyes are wide. “Alana no. It’s- it’s not like- like that.”

The frown Alana give him makes it very clear she doesn’t believe him at all, and half of Evan wants to give in to that, to tell her everything, about Connor and the drugs and the forest and the bleary fragments of conversation he can recall from his time beneath that tree, because then at least it won’t be entirely his problem. At least she might help make Connor safe.

The other half of him knows he can’t tell her all of that, though. He can’t tell on Connor because Connor didn’t tell on him. Not intentionally anyway.

“Please just leave it, I’ll- I’ll talk to him, okay?” he pleads, and Alana looks at him hard for a long moment, her expression conflicted, and then sighs.

“Alright,” she agrees, “But Evan, if you think he is in danger of harming himself, then you need to tell someone. Connor might hate you, but at least he’d still be alive and well enough to hate you.”

Evan looks away and nods. “For sure,” he lies, and he doesn’t know of Alana fully believes him or not, but she does at least let the conversation drop. 

That night, as he sits at his desk and attempts productivity and waits for a reply from Connor he knows he isn’t going to get, Evan does consider telling his mom about what had really happened in the forest that day. He stresses over the outcomes of his options, weighs her upset of knowing against the likely end result in his downwards spiral, tries to work out what that end result might be.

Ultimately, his worrying is fruitless anyway, since his mom isn’t even in the house. She’s working late at the hospital, and he knows she won’t be home until after class since she’d texted him to tell him so. He thinks he’ll still be awake by then, and in the end, he is, and so he does have the opportunity to start the conversation Alana has made him promise he would when she quietly opens his door and peaks through the crack into the darkened room.

She hovers there a moment, as though to check he’s still there and still okay, and Evan could so very easily sit up in his bed and explain her what has happened. He has the opportunity, but he doesn’t take it. He lies still in his bed instead, breathes slowly and evenly and feigns sleep until his mom closes the door and heads to her own bedroom down the hall.

Evan lays in his bed for a long while afterwards, listens to the tv playing in her bedroom as he tries to work out if his cowardly act was for the better or not.


	18. Blamed but not to blame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give up predicting chapter counts. 
> 
> On a serious note, although I don't normally give trigger warnings at the start of chapters, I'm going to for this one because it's heavy. This chapter contains an suicide attempt, and at the end of it, it isn't clear if the character is going to be okay or not. There is no warning for character death in this though, so I'm sure you can extrapolate from there. If you do want more detail or a summary or need to know what happens next, I'm bumblie-bee on tumblr. 
> 
> Stay safe :)

There’s a note on the counter when Evan makes it downstairs the next morning, and although it’s sitting on his restocked lunchbox like has become the new norm, it’s a much longer note than his mom usually writes.

Along with her standard hurriedly written apology for leaving before he’s awake, she’s added that she’s cooking pasta for dinner and thinks it would be nice if they ate together since they’ve seen so little of each other recently. She’s written an apology for that too, and then another for her part in the argument they’d had a few nights before, and then signed off the note with ‘Love you always, love Mom xx’, just as she used to sign off the notes she’d leave beside his bed at the hospital whenever she’d had to go while he was sleeping.

Evan stares at it for a bit, trying to decode the heavy, tight feeling in his chest and the ache in his throat. Eventually, he sighs and puts down the note, not knowing what to think of anything anymore. He does take his lunch box from the counter when he leaves just as his mom had instructed him to in the P.S. beneath her name, though. He knows she’d worry if he didn’t.

That morning, Evan spends much of his time out of class hiding from Alana simply because if she can’t find him to ask him if he’d spoken to his mom, he won’t have to lie to her and say he has. He won’t have to spend the rest of the day fretting that she’s seen through his very likely transparent lie either.

It’s as he’s skirting the lockers on his way from his English Literature class to Art that he crosses Zoe in the corridor. She doesn’t see him, doesn’t look away from the animatedly chatting girl Evan often sees her with but cannot name, but he sees her and notices the slightly darker than usual skin beneath her eyes that comes with too little sleep and the distant sort of expression she’s wearing that gives him the impression she’s not actually listening to her friend, despite her head bobbing and her lips smiling at regular intervals.

He wonders if it wasn’t a good night in the Murphy household as he makes the rest of the way to class, if instead of sleeping, she’d spent the night listening to one of the arguments Evan knows occur between Connor and Fucking Larry even with Mrs C. Murphy acting as an emulsifier. He wonders if that hypothetical argument might explain why Connor is missing from school again, too. 

Not that Connor needs a reason to skip school. Evan knows of this for sure.

In his chemistry class that afternoon, Evan’s cell vibrates. And vibrates. And vibrates. And when he pulls it out under his desk to put it on Do Not disturb since silent mode isn’t all that silent when you’re in a quiet classroom, he finds four texts and three missed calls all from the same unknown number. He frowns at the screen, confused and a little unnerved, until Mr Smith calls his name from the front.

“Is something more important happening under your desk, Mr Hansen?”

The class snickers and Evan flushes. Cheeks burning, he stutters a garbled apology as he hurriedly stuffs his cell back in his jean pocket and then tries to resumes pretending to watch the board with interest when the lesson continues.

It’s only when another call comes through that he realises that as distracted by the determination of the owner of the unknown number to reach him as he was, he never actually switched his cell to Do Not Disturb.

The vibrations are strong in his pocket and sound awfully loud in the room, almost louder than Evan’s heart as it picks up in fear. He doesn’t know who is trying to contact him, and he doesn’t know why, and after a good few minutes of worrying about that rather than his chemistry work, he figures maybe something has probably happened to his mom and it’s someone from the hospital trying to contact him to let him know. It’s the most reasonable explanation, he thinks. He knows it’s his cell number that’s down on her emergency contact information despite the form asking for an adult since there wasn’t anyone else she could have put.

Dimly aware his heart is racing, Evan picks at his cuticles with shaking hands and worries over what he can do. He ought to go and check his phone, call back and see what has happened, but half of him is too scared to put his hand in class and draw attention to himself. The other half of him is too scared to find out what has happened.

He doesn’t want anything to have happened to his mom.

He doesn’t think he could cope if it had.

Hell, he can barely cope as it is.

The cell vibrates another four times, three calls and another text, before Evan’s resolve crumbles, and despite his anxiety and fear of putting his hand up in class, he does just that and in a shaking voice asks to go to the restroom. 

Mr Smith sighs and says he should have gone at lunch but does let him go, and Evan wonders if he’d perceived his fear induced restlessness as desperation. He certainly pushed through the classroom and out into the corridor quickly enough that he thinks it probably does look like he very much needs to pee.

The door is barely closed behind him before his cell is back in his hand, and when Evan turns on the screen, he finds there are now 7 missed calls from the unknown number sitting below the 4 from his mom the night before. There are 5 texts, too. Most are demanding that he answer his phone, but the one in the middle solves at least part of the riddle by informing him the number belongs to Zoe Murphy.

Evan frowns at the text, his relief that something clearly hasn’t happened to his mom since it wouldn’t be Zoe calling him if it had morphing into concern as he begins to realise what her calling him just might mean. 

He almost drops the cell when it rings in his hand, and his shaking thumb leaves a sweaty smudge on the screen when he answers the call.

“Evan! Thank fuck. Where’s Connor?” Zoe demands as soon as the call connects.

“Connor?” he repeats numbly, stupidly, because being asked where Connor was really wasn’t what he expected when he answered the phone. It isn’t a question he wants to be asked either, since it isn’t one he knows the answer to and one Zoe is very clearly desperate to know. He isn’t all that sure why she thinks he’d know the answer to that either.

“Yes; Connor,” she snaps, sounding panicked and a little shaky. “Do you know where he is?”

Evan finds himself feeling shaky too, more so than usual. “N-no? I haven’t- he’s not here today. I-I don’t think he is anyway, I-”

Zoe swears roughly down the line. It’s a harsh, upset sort of sound that Evan knows cannot be a good sign at all. A cold feeling of dread settles itself in his gut.

“Zoe, what’s happened?”

Her rough sigh is wet enough that Evan thinks she might be close to crying. “He’s taken mom’s sleeping pills from the bathroom and no one knows where he’s-”

“Oh God, Zoe,” Evan interrupts, voice trembling awfully and pitched much too high. Through the humming in his ears, he doesn’t even realise she’s still talking until he’s already speaking over her. “I- I found him before in the forest and he had some pills, a-and I don’t know what they were, they were your mom’s, I think, but, I- I took them off him, I poured them away, into the river even though it isn’t good for the fish because I didn’t think either of us would be safe with them and- and, oh god, I know- I know I should have said something to someone but-”

“Evan, shut up!”

Zoe’s abrupt command startles him from his spiral like a cascade of icy water over his head. Abruptly, Evan stops and draws in a wheezy breath. It rattles in his too tight chest like he’s downing on something more physical than guilt and panic, but before he has time to try and catch his breath, Zoe is talking again.

“Where was he?” she demands sharply, “Evan, where was he before?”

“In- in Ellison.” His voice shakes. “At the tree. At my tree.”

“Your tree?”

“Where I- where I fell?”

A beat passes before Zoe replies, and Evan wondering if she’s piecing together that story in her head. If she is, she doesn’t comment on it.

“Can you take me there?” she demands instead. “Evan, you need to take me there.”

Evan nods and pushes himself off the wall to start down the corridor despite not really knowing where he is or where he’s going.

“I- yeah, okay, I- Wait, Zoe, how?” he frets breathlessly, stopping again in the middle of the corridor. “I don’t have a car.”

There’s silence down the phone for a moment, and then suddenly Zoe’s talking again, her words sure and sharp and almost too quick for him to understand. “I’ll find Alana. She’s got study hall now, she’ll take us. Go to the senior parking lot. We’ll meet you there.”

Evan agrees just as the call disconnects with a beep. The cell drops to his side, barely staying held in his numb, shaking fingers and, as the reality of the situation catches up with him, a shuddery, sort of exhale spasms from his tight chest.

“Oh God-,” he whispers shakily, drawing his fingers through his hair. “Oh god, oh god oh-” A particularly violent twinge of his churning stomach forces his mouth closed and he swallows, and takes a breath, and then he’s running through the empty corridors towards the exit.

Evan doesn’t really remember his passage through the school, or waiting outside for Alana and Zoe, or getting into Alana’s tiny car even though it must have been a bit of an ordeal since it only has two doors and Evan had ended up in the back.

There are flickers of the journey between the school and Ellison state park. Memories of a seatbelt his violently shaky hands had been unable to clip into place, of Zoe’s trembling voice demanding directions, of his stuttering badly as he’d described the way to the park, of Alana’s terrible driving and her panicked apologies and reassurances that it was normally better, of a car horn that blared angrily as they passed through a light that turned red just a little before they reach it.

He remembers the crunching of the tyres on gravel as the car skids to a halt in the parking lot beside an awfully familiar small blue car. It’s parked haphazardly, too, and the driver’s seat is empty, and Evan knows what that means.

Zoe’s out of her seat before Alana’s even got the handbrake on, and then Evan is climbing out after her on legs so shaky he’s surprised they don’t just buckle entirely the moment he tries to put weight on them.

“Which way? Evan, which way?” she demands, her voice tight and wet and high with panic, and Evan points to a path with a trembling hand.

Running through the forest feels like déjà vu except it isn’t because Evan has been there before.

It isn’t quite the same; there were more leaves on the trees before, and fewer underfoot, and Zoe and Alana certainly hadn’t been beside him as he ran the same path exactly two weeks prior, but it’s gut-wrenching similar, too. Just like before, his heart thrums in his throat, and his legs shake, and his broken arm throbs nastily with every footfall.

His mind whirrs and loops and eddies as he makes his way down the familiar path. It terrifies him with images of what he might find when he reaches a tree he’d never wanted to see again, with the knowledge that unlike last time, everything might not be the same when they get there.

They might be too late. 

Connor might not be okay.

And if he isn’t, then Evan knows that’ll be entirely his fault.

And it turns out Connor isn’t okay.

Zoe screams when they find him, and Alana very suddenly has her phone in her hand and pressed to her ear, and Evan finds himself falling to his knees beside Connor and pressing the hoodie shrugged from his own shoulders to the blood on his arms. His voice is desperate as he calls Connor’s name.

Seconds later, Zoe’s on the floor beside him and she’s crying and yelling and ineffectively shaking Connor’s shoulders. Evan thinks he probably would be screaming and crying too if he could feel anything at all, but he’s almost numb. It’s like his brain isn’t really processing what is happening.

He thinks he would probably be shaking Connors shoulders, too, if his hands weren’t too busy holding the hoodie tight around Connors wrists. The grey fabric darkens quicker than he’d like, becomes wet and sticky and disgustingly red. It’s going to be stained, and it isn’t even his to ruin. It’s Connor’s. The same hoodie he’d draped over Evan five weeks before under the very same tree.

The situation now it so similar and yet so different. It’s backwards and warped. The hoodie provides pressure instead of warmth, and Zoe shakes Connor’s shoulders instead of Connor shaking Evan’s, and unlike before when the calling and shaking had roused Evan, tentatively reaffirmed his weak grasp to consciousness, Connor doesn’t wake. 

The best they get is a fluttering of heavy eyelashes and a retch.

At some point, Alana goes, and then when she’s back there are paramedics with her, dressed in green and carrying bags of equipment and wearing expressions that look utterly heartbroken beneath the blank professional façade. One of them ushers Zoe away, takes her a few trees closer to the path and holds her tightly as she sobs. Another pries Evans hands free and then he’s being physically moved away from Connor, too. He almost trips on a medicine bottle as he’s lead away, sending it skittering silently away into the undergrowth.

“You said he was okay,” Alana accuses, suddenly beside him. “You said this wasn’t going to happen!”

Her words are hard to understand, chocked her tears and muffled by the humming in Evan’s brain and lost beneath the urgent voices of the paramedics crowding around the body beneath the tree, but Evan knows what she means.

He knows she’s blaming him.

He knows she’s right to.

He knows this is his fault.

Evan doesn’t look at her and he doesn’t reply. There isn’t anything he could say to make any of this any better, and he doesn’t think he could find the words even if there was. Externally numb but internally screaming, he stares at the people gathered beneath a tree instead.

It’s a tree Evan himself had very nearly died under little over a month ago. A tree he hadn’t died under though, because Connor had saved him.

Evan fears that maybe he hadn’t got there quick enough to return the favour. 

The paramedics take Connor away and he’s still alive when they do. He’s lost a lot of blood and taken many more sleeping pills than could possibly be good and he isn’t breathing for himself anymore, but his heart is still beating. It isn’t even a steady beating. It’s a beating that has the paramedics rushing him away towards the ambulance and talking in low urgent voices because they don’t know for how much longer it’s going to be beating at all.

Evan watches feeling lost and numb and like he isn’t real any more as they hurry from the clearing, watches a terrified Zoe follow behind with Alana at her side. Her arm is around Zoe’s waist, simultaneously holding her close and keeping her upright.

Evan doesn’t follow. He’s frozen to the spot and his legs are shaking almost as much as Zoe’s and he isn’t sure he won’t fall to the ground the second he unlocks his knees.

He doesn’t feel like he deserves to go with them either.

He knows how very much his own fault this all is.

How he could so easily have not let this happen if he had just told Zoe or Mr and Mrs Murphy or his mom or someone at school what he suspected Connor was going to do.

How Connor could be okay and conscious and breathing on his own if he’d tried a little harder to get him help.

It takes him longer than it should to notice there’s paper in his hand, and even longer to realise he doesn’t remember where he got it from. When he shakily unfolds it, he finds there’s blood staining the sheet, and he smears more across the white from his fingertips when he tries to flatten it out. The paper is dirty and worn at the edges and thin along the three main creases as though it has been folded and unfolded over and over and over until it finally came to rest clenched loosely in Connor’s limp fist.

Because that’s where it came from. Evan remembers now. Remembers picking it up after it was knocked from Connors grasp as the paramedics pulled his own hands away. 

It’s Connor’s paper.

And Evan briefly wonders if it’s Connor’s note, if that’s what he’s found.

Heart thrumming in his throat, he starts reading, but when he does, he finds his name at the top, and realises very quickly it isn’t Connor’s note at all. It’s his own writing. His own letter. The one he had written for Dr Sherman, the one Connor had stolen from him in the computer room what feels like months ago when really it’s only been weeks. 

Except.

Except it isn’t just his letter anymore.

It isn’t as he’d last seen it.

Not entirely.

The writing on the page is no longer just his.

Because at the bottom, written in the same spidery writing scrawled over Evan’s cast, are two short sentences.

_Don’t blame yourself, Hansen. _Connor has written in a shaking hand.

_There was nothing you could do. _


	19. Literally and Figuratively

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting there! Thank you for the comments on the last chapter, like most authors, I love getting them!
> 
> Also, just a note, Evan says something in this which doesn't sound good - Don't panic, though; he's just being an unreliable narrator.

Evan finds himself back in his house, standing in his dining room with no recollection of how he got there. There’s mud on his shoes from the forest floor, and the knees of his pants are damp from kneeling, and there’s dried blood staining the front of his shirt. More of the same dark, ruby red is smeared on his cast, too, drying on the fibreglass and soaked into the soft padding near his palm.

It makes him feel sick.

The iron tang hanging heavy in the air isn’t helping that either, and nor is the unmistakable taste of stomach acid that lingers on his tongue.

He doesn’t really remember how long it’s been there, doesn’t remember exactly where he was when his stomach revolted, but he thinks it was probably somewhere along the walk back through the forest. It was probably just bile and water he threw up, since he hasn’t felt well enough to eat a proper meal in days. He’s been too anxious, too stressed, too constantly nauseous to make stomaching food a good idea, and just too hopeless to find a problem with that.

He still feels sick.

Sick with guilt because there is blood on his hands, both fugitively and literally.

Because Connor Murphy is very likely dead and that wouldn’t have happened if Evan had done something, anything, to help him.

He wishes he had. He wishes he had found a way to talk to him or get him help from someone much more trained to deal with such things. He wishes he had plucked up the courage to tell someone, a teacher at school, or maybe the counsellor there, or maybe Zoe, or Connor’s parents, or Alana when she’d asked, or even his mom.

She’d have known what to do.

She’d know what to do now too, but Evan can’t ask her because she’s not there.

She’s never there.

He stands there, nauseous and numb and shaking uncontrollably and realises that he doesn’t just want his mom because he knows she would have known what to do. He just wants his mom. 

He wants her to be there, for her to take one look at him, at his trembling, too thin body and the tears on his cheeks and the blood on his hands and draw him into a hug regardless of it all. He wants to collapse into her arms and have her to hold him tightly, have her keep him safe and tell him everything is going to be okay even though it can never all be okay again. 

He wants her to be there for him.

It’s selfish, he knows. He shouldn’t be thinking of himself, he should be thinking of Connor who may or may not still be alive, and he should be thinking of Zoe who might lose her brother because of him and his stupid decision not to tell because Connor hadn’t and his irrational hope that maybe one day he and Connor could have been friends.

He should be thinking of Mrs C. Murphy and Fucking Larry who might already be without their son.

Evan thinks he probably would be throwing up if had anything left in his stomach to vomit.

Instead he just has mud on his shoes and blood on his shirt and cast and hands.

There’s still blood on his hands.

Robotically, he walks to the bathroom where he turns on the tap, holds his hands underneath, and scrubs, and scrubs, and scrubs until they’re raw and burning and his cast is soaked. The red doesn’t all wash away. It sticks under his fingernails and stains the padding at the edge of his cast and the water does absolutely nothing to help the blood that isn’t real but is there all the same.

Washing his hands does nothing to lessen the guilt of the death he has very likely caused.

He doesn’t think he can ever wash that away.

The water is too hot he realises eventually.

It burns.

Scolds.

His hands are red from more than blood.

Evan doesn’t feel it.

Doesn’t care.

He just keeps washing and washing and washing and-

“Evan?”

It takes Evan much longer than it should to place his own mom’s voice and even longer to realise he hadn’t even heard her come in. He hadn’t heard the door open and close again, and he doesn’t know if that’s because it had been too quiet compared to the gush of the water from the tap and the humming in his ears, or if it’s because he’s just too caught up in his own head to notice.

“Evan, are you here?” she calls out in the hallway, her voice loud but echoing and distant. Evan thinks she might be calling up the stairs to him. He thinks she sounds panicked too, frightened, and he isn’t sure if it’s that that spurs him into motion or the fact that, unexpectedly, his mom is suddenly there and looking for him and he wants nothing more than to be with her right now.

Well, no, he actually wants nothing more than for everything to be okay again, but he knows that just isn’t possible.

Heidi’s at the foot of the stairs when Evan stumbles from the toilet. There’s paper in her hands, white and black and smeared with red, and she looks completely terrified. Her panicked expression crumples with relief and then folds back again in concern when she sees him.

“Evan, are you okay?” she demands, coming to meet him, and Evan takes one look at her, at her worry, and realises he just can’t lie any longer.

“Mom…”

“Honey? Honey, what’s happened?” She’s frowning hard and her eyes are wide and worried as they x-ray him. “Is that your blood? Are you hurt?”

Evan shakes his head, the motion slow and almost robotic. He’s vaguely aware that his still wet hands are dripping onto the floor.

“I killed him, mom,” he tells her quietly, his voice breathy and distant and flat. It shakes, too, along with the rest of him. “I- I killed him.”

“Killed who?” his mom asks, taking hold of his upper arms so tightly it hurts. “Honey, what’s happened? You’re not making sense.”

“Connor. He- I should have said something mom, I should have-” Evan draws in a shuddering wet breath, one that catches in his phlegmy throat because it turns out he’s crying, tears leaking from his burning eyes and carving salty trails down his cheeks.

“He killed himself, mom,” he manages to choke through his tears, and then, with that, he crumbles.

Just breaks entirely.

His mom’s arms envelop him, holding him as he sobs noisily, messily onto her shoulder and Evan’s dimly aware that he’s ruining her hoodie just like he ruined Connor’s not so long ago. He doesn’t think he could stop even if he wanted too. He isn’t in control of his emotions anymore. He isn’t in control at all. Of anything. It’s just happening.

His body shakes and his breathing hitches, and his tears flow fast and unstoppable like water spilling from a fractured dam.

Broken. Just like him.

Like everything.

His mom doesn’t shush him as he cries, and she doesn’t tell him it’s going to be okay. She just tells him she’s there as she holds him and lets him sob as his heart breaks and his insides churn messily with guilt because it isn’t just his world that is shattering.

It isn’t just his life he has ruined. 

At some point, they end up on the floor, sitting together on the threadbare rug in the hallway, and Evan doesn’t quite know if he sat down or fell down, but he doesn’t think it matters because even though he’s collapsed and crying on the carpet, he’s still doing so much better than Connor is.

His mom stays with him as he mourns, holding him tightly and rocking him as though he’s small as she whispers words of comfort he barely hears over the rushing in his ears and the pounding of his heart. As he sobs, his aching head rests on her shoulder, his tears staining her hoodie, and his shoulder shakes against her chest. He isn’t comfortable; his legs are curled awkwardly beneath him, and his shirt is cold and wet from cast that’s caught between their stomachs, an his broken arm throbs, protesting the twisted angle, but it doesn’t matter.

None of it matters.

None of it can be any worse than what he thinks Connor’s family are about to go through.

Evan cries, and cries, and cries until his head is throbbing and his eyes are burning and raw. He mourns until he can’t anymore, until he’s drained of emotion and energy and oxygen. It leaves him numb with a faux sense of calm like he’s hit the eye for the storm, and kind of empty. Hollow. Rung out. Even his breathing could almost be described as tranquil. It’s wet, still, and choppy with lingering tearful hiccups, but he’s no longer hyperventilating.

He thinks he’s too tired for that.

Too exhausted both emotionally and physically.

He’s even too tired to hold himself up, he realises eventually.

Too weak, too shaky, much too lightheaded.

He’s slumped against his mom, not sitting under his own steam at all. It’s her arms is holding him upright, keeping him from falling entirely because he doesn’t even have the strength not to do that anymore.

Not emotionally and not physically either.

It isn’t until he looks up that he realises his mom’s eyes are wet too.

“You’re crying?” His voice comes out wet and rough and wrong, and his mom sniffles a little but doesn’t wipe her eyes because to do that she’d have to uncurl one from around him. She shakes her head a little and then leans it down on top of his.

“I’m just sad you’re hurting so,” she says, and her voice is tight and wet too.

“I’m sorry.” Evan swallows and rests his head back against her chest. The beat of her heart against his ear is loud and comforting. He hears the rush of air leaving her lungs as she sighs.

“You have nothing to apologise for,” she tells him, and she sounds so sad, so honest, so pained. It’s like his apology physically hurts her. A chocked sort of cry bubbles from Evan’s lungs though, because she isn’t right. Not at all.

“I do, mom; it’s- it’s my fault,” he insists, his words fragmented as his chest heaves with renewed dry sobs.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Heidi disagrees quietly, softly, as her hand resumes its runs over his back. It catches on the ridges of his ribs, thrumming like fingers on a radiator or a stick being dragged along a metal fence. It isn’t a bad sensation, just odd, and Evan focuses on that and the warmth of her hands on his skin rather than his suddenly too tight chest or the urge to argue back.

He wants to argue back so, so badly.

She’s just wrong.

He has so much to be sorry for.

So much that is his fault.

So much more than just Connor.

It’s him who’s ruined their finances. Him who’s made her get behind at school. Him whose fault it is the boiler is still broken because they can’t afford a new one.

Evan focuses on her hand running over his ribs. On the quite rustle of his polo. Of her heart beating against his ear.

“Do you think you can you tell me what happened, honey?” she asks eventually, when his spasming lungs have calmed again. “I don’t- I’m not sure I fully understand.”

A shuddering, wet breath leaves Evan’s lungs and he sniffles into his mom’s hoodie as he struggles to find the energy or the words to explain.

“It’s okay, take your time.” She rubs at his back again, hand firm and gentle and Evan nods. He tries to summon his strength because the least he can do after everything he’s broken is to admit it was him who has caused the pain he knows is coming.

“He- ugh- Connor,” he starts, his words choked and rough with crying and voice wavering, “He- he took some pills in- in Ellison. Under my tree, you know the tree where I-” he pauses, twitches his cast where it’s trapped between them in indication. “I- I found him there with some before and I tipped them away but I should have- I should have told someone, maybe, or… I don’t know. Th-that’s how I knew where he was when Zoe asked; we’d been there before.

“But he- the bottle was empty, this time. H-he’d taken them. All of them. And- and there was- he was bleeding too. Really bleeding, and- and I tried to stop it, but there was just- there was just so much, and I couldn’t, I- it wouldn’t stop-” Evan breaks off, choked by lungs spasming with upset and tears and phlegm. His mom holds him firmly, rocking him gently and rubbing his back whilst he calms but staying silent, waiting patiently for him to say what he has to say.

“He wouldn’t wake up, mom, he wouldn’t- I tried, and Zoe tried, and the paramedics tried and- and then h-he wasn’t breathing. They- I-I can’t remember. It was all so fast. I was just watching, and Alana was yelling b-because it’s my fault, a-a-and then they took him away and I think Zoe went with him, but I don’t know, I don’t- I can’t remember. I don’t even know how I got home.”

His mom’s hand pauses on his spine. He thinks it takes her longer to reply than it should, but he isn’t all that sure. “They took him to the hospital?” she asks quietly, sounding a little confused.

Evan nods into her chest.

“And Zoe’s his… girlfriend?”

“Sister.”

His mom doesn’t reply instantly, and when she finally speaks, she sounds almost cautious. “Evan, honey,” she says slowly, “I don’t think they’d let his sister ride with him if he- if he wasn’t alive anymore.”

Evan coughs out a chocked sob. “He wasn’t dead, mom,” he splutters through his tears. He tries to push himself up so that he can see his mom’s face, but his arms are shaking and uncoordinated and she’s holding him upright much too strongly. He wants to see her expression though, wants to know why she thought that, wants to know if she somehow knows something he doesn’t because maybe she’d seen Connor at work, recognised his name, maybe-

“Oh god, Evan, I’m so sorry! I thought you said-” she breaks off very suddenly, swallows audibly. “Listen, honey, if they took him to the hospital with Zoe, I think that means they were still trying to save him. That’s what they do at hospitals isn’t it? He might still be going to be okay.” 

Evan’s head aches when he shakes it, but he doesn’t stop because she’s wrong. She hadn’t seen what had happened. Hadn’t seen the empty pill bottle that rolled without a rattle, hadn’t seen the blood on Connor’s arms and the hoodie and the forest floor. Hadn’t heard the panicked calls of the paramedics as they made their way back through the forest. She hadn’t seen their hopeless, fearful expressions and the sorrow in their eyes when they’d arrived.

“I don’t think he can be,” he protests, wetly, only realising then that he’s crying freely again. His mom must realise too as her hand resumes its gentle path over his back. “There was so much blood, mom.”

“I know, honey,” she soothes, even though she doesn’t know at all. “But I think there is a chance he still might be. Doctors can work miracles, sometimes. There was a time when I didn’t think you’d pull through, but you did.”

For a second, Evan stills, his choppy breathing held because it’s true; there had been a time when his own life was hanging just as precariously in the balance before the doctors had managed to save him. He knows his mom was lucky, that it could have gone either way for him just like it could for Connor, he just has this awful, heavy feeling of dread that the outcome for Mrs C Murphy and her family won’t be quite as happy.

His exhale is wet and choked and more like a sob when he finally breathes out.

“What if they can’t this time?” he asks quietly, his voice muffled by his mom’s hoodie as she holds him tightly.

Heidi sighs into his hair and tightens her arms around him. “Then we deal with that when we know for sure that’s the outcome,” she says, and she sounds so sure and so sad and like she’s barely holding it together. Evan doesn’t know what to say. 

In the end he says nothing. There is nothing more for him to say.

For a while they just sit there, Evan silent and rocking gently in his mom’s arms. She holds tightly, as though she’s worried he’ll fall apart entirely if she lets go. If he’s honest with himself, Evan isn’t all that sure he won’t.

“It was Connor who found you that day, wasn’t it? The same Connor?” Heidi asks quietly a few minutes later. “He’s the one who signed your cast.”

Evan nods into her chest, thinks of the name scrawled over the damp, stained cast and tries not to start crying again.

“Yeah, he- he found me and called the ambulance. And he stayed with me until it got there I think- I- really can’t remember much at the end.

“I remember him talking to me, though. He asked… about my name, and Harry Potter I think and… I kept, I think I kept passing out, or- or something because he kept waking me up again.” Evan’s voice cracks a little and he tries not to think about how he couldn’t return the favour.

“It’s his hoodie, mom. You know, the grey one. I was shivering even though it was August so- so he gave it to me, to keep me warm even though I wasn’t really cold, I was just… dying, or whatever. And I think he knew that; he kept telling me I couldn’t sleep, but he kept telling me that it was going to be okay, too and he kept-” Evan breaks off to sniffle, wriggles a hand free to wipe away the tears he hadn’t realised were falling. “He was holding my hand, mom,” he whispers through his tears, “just so- just so I knew I wasn’t- wasn’t alone.”

“Oh, baby,” his mom mutters into his hair. She sounds utterly heartbroken, and when Evan pulls away enough to look up, he finds her eyes are wet and shiny too.

“Mom, it’s okay,” he sooths even though he’s crying even more than she is.

She shakes her head at him, coughs out a single, humourless laugh.

“No, it isn’t okay. I hate that you had to go through that.” A tear makes its way down her cheek and she wipes it away. Her hand takes his when it returns, holding tightly as she asks, “Evan, why wouldn’t you tell me before?” Her voice is sad and choked and a little confused. “Were you … together?”

“No?” Evan’s swollen eyes crumple in confusion. He isn’t all that sure how his mom has managed to make that leap. “No, I just. I don’t know. He didn’t- you said he didn’t stick around after- after the paramedics got there and I don’t know, I just, I thought he didn’t want people to know. So, I just. I didn’t say?”

His mom frowns a little, her brow ruffling over her blotchy eyes as though she’s to understand the logic behind what he’s said, and Evan can’t exactly blame her for not understanding. His logic doesn’t make a lot of sense looking back. He isn’t sure it made sense at the time.

“So, you weren’t friends?” his mom asks eventually, and she doesn’t sound like she’s judging or angry about his lies, just confused and sad and maybe a little hurt. The arm around him and the hand holding his don’t loosen even if she is. 

“No,” he admits, wishing so badly that he could have said yes there, that they were friends and he was okay, and Connor was okay. “But I think maybe- maybe we could have been, if things had been different.”

His mom looks sad and rubs at his arm. “Maybe you still could be?” she suggests quietly.

Evan doesn’t even consider it. He just shakes his head against her shoulder and sighs. He isn’t sure if he’s relieved or not when she doesn’t even try to protest.


	20. maybe, just maybe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, the last chapter. Kind of, there's an epilogue (or two), but in terms of the main storyline this is it! 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has read, bookmarked, commented, or left kudos, I hope you've enjoyed this angst-fest.

Evan doesn’t remember a conversation about getting up, but he supposes there must have been one because his mom is currently helping him to his feet. Numbly, he cooperates, follows her lead and climbs to his feet even though he’s shaking awfully and his limbs are clumsy and uncoordinated. When he makes it upright, he finds his head and vision are swimming and his balance is off entirely. He’s dizzy enough that he knows for sure if Heidi’s arms hadn’t been there, strong and steadying and holding him tightly, he would have fallen back to the floor.

She steadies him whilst his head clears and his ears stop humming, and then her hand shadows his back as he makes his way to the sofa as though she doesn’t trust him not to fall. Evan isn’t sure he trusts himself not to either. He isn’t sure if it’s all the crying or the shock of what has happened or the fact he hasn’t eaten or slept properly in a while, but something is making his head spin and his knees threaten to buckle with every step.

There’s a concerned sort of frown in his mom’s lips as she sits down beside him on the sofa, and it only deepens when her smaller hand wraps its way around his unbroken wrist. Evan almost laughs because he didn’t need her to check his pulse to know that his heart is racing; he can feel it throbbing in his chest and hear it rushing in his ears. She is a nurse’s aid though, he supposes. This is kind of what she does. Her entire job is to fix people. Normally, those people haven’t made the mess they are themselves though.

He doesn’t laugh at the situation, and his mom doesn’t laugh either, she just frowns at him a long, calculating moment and then asks when he last ate.

Which… Evan can’t actually remember if he ate anything the day before or not. He hasn’t eaten today, that’s for sure.

He half expects his mom to scold him when he shrugs instead of replying, but she doesn’t. A look flits across her face, one of upset and pain and something else Evan can’t quite read. It takes him longer than it should to realise she looks more than a little overwhelmed, a little lost and unsure. It’s as though maybe she can’t work out whether to address his mental distress first or his physical.

She goes to fetch him a cola from the kitchen after that, frowns at him and tells him to stay where he is before she leaves. Evan frowns, too, and wonders where she thinks he’d be going if she hadn’t told him to stay. They’ve already established he’s weak as a kitten and dizzy as anything and very clearly currently going nowhere under his own steam. 

It isn’t like has anywhere to go, anyway.

When his mom finally returns, her eyes are red and blotchy, more so than when she left. Her hand trembles when she passes over the familiar red can she’s holding.

“I put some bread into toast, too,” she tells him as she sits back down beside him, and Evan nods, and mutters his thanks instead of bringing up that she’s been crying again, and then lifts his aching head from the cushion and takes the already opened can with clumsy hands. It’s unusually heavy, and his hands shake when he tries to drink and some spills onto the blue stripes of his polo.

It marks the fabric. Stains along with the blood.

Evan tries not to think about that.

Just as his mom had thought, the sugar in the cola helps, and after the first few sips, his hands begin to steady a little and the can no longer feels like such a weight in his hands. His mom must notice too, as her anxious expression eases just a little as though she’s relieved to have at least managed to solve a fraction of what is wrong with him. She still looks worried though, the soft frown staying on her brows even when she settles back into the sofa, curling her legs up and angling herself towards him to watch him as he drinks. Evan thinks he’d probably feel awkward and exposed under her gaze if he hadn’t just spent the past however long sobbing in her arms on the floor of their hallway.

Now he just feels tired.

Hopeless.

Empty, almost.

“Do you have your phone?” she asks when the can is empty enough that his hands have stopped shaking and just holding his head up no longer feels like a chore. The phone in question is still in Evan’s pocket, it hasn’t left since he ended the call from Zoe, but he frowns anyway, wondering why his mom has decided to pick now to check he hasn’t lost it. Which, actually, Evan realises, is a fairly good point, because although he still has his phone, his backpack and laptop are still in the chemistry lab, abandoned there after he ran out earlier that afternoon. Or he hopes they are anyway, or that someone nice has collected them and kept them safe and his belongings aren’t currently being sold at auction.

Not that anyone would want to buy them; his backpack is plain black and boring and beginning to fray around the edges, and his laptop is seriously old and slow. He thinks that anyone who took them would probably just throw them on the roof instead, and Evan doesn’t really want his belongings on the roof.

Not that it matters much, considering the grand scale of things.

Considering everything else that has happened today.

“Evan?”

Evan blinks, finds his mom staring at him again. “Oh, um y-yeah. Why?”

“Because, I think it might be a good idea for you to send a text to Zoe, see if she can give you an update on how Connor’s doing,” she explains gently, reasonably, but Evan finds himself shaking his head and leaning back into the sofa.

“I’m not sure I want to know,” he admits quietly, his voice a little strained. “And I don’t think Zoe would want to talk to me anyway.”

“I still think we need to try,” his mom tells him, frowning a little. “If Zoe doesn’t want to reply then that’s up to her, but whatever happens is still going to happen whether you find out about it now or not. Just think about it, okay?” She takes hold of the fingers sticking out of his cast, gives them a gentle, encouraging squeeze.

Evan does think about it even though he doesn’t really want to. There’s little else he can think about other than Connor and the forest and the hoodie he stained red and the bottle that had rolled without a rattle. He’s still thinking about it when his mom comes back from the kitchen and hands him a plate with a piece of buttered toast on it, and it doesn’t leave his thoughts as he robotically chews his food and swallows it down into a stomach that’s surely churning much too much to make eating a good idea.

He’s still thinking about it, still dreading both getting a reply and not as he passes his phone over to his mom, and he still knows he’d rather not know the outcome of what has happened to Connor as she types the message.

It’s like Schrödinger’s box and Schrödinger’s cat; in the same way that the cat is both alive and dead until anyone checks, Connor can’t be dead for sure until he checks either.

Evan thinks he probably is. But still. He doesn’t want to know that for sure.

His mom reads the text she’s typed out to him before she sends it, ask if it sounds okay, if it’s what he wants to say, and Evan nods and agrees even though he hasn’t heard a word of what she said. 

The phone stays in his hands as he sits on the sofa beside his mom for a little while longer, and he takes it into the bathroom with him when he goes to shower and change, and it lays on the table as he sits in the kitchen and watches his mom prepare a dinner he’s sure neither of them will have an appetite for. 

The phone stays still and silent the whole time, the lock screen void of notifications.

Evan isn’t sure if he could have read a reply to his message even if he got one.

They end up back on the sofa, sat in a heavy sort of silence and not knowing what to do with themselves or the time as they wait for the inevitable.

Evan sleeps, at some point, takes an unexpected nap he hadn’t thought he’d have been able to take but apparently could because he’s both physically and mentally exhausted. He wakes curled up on the sofa with his head on his mom’s shoulder and the soft blanket that usually rests on the arm draped over him. It’s like how he would wake during his first few days home from the hospital little over a month ago, except unlike then, he isn’t sore and aching and wincing as he wakes.

He’s awake very suddenly, though, and when he wakes, his heart is in his throat and a ‘no’, loud and urgent and terrified, is on his lips. It’s only for a second, until he realises he isn’t below a tree with a laughing, pale-skinned Connor, and he isn’t coated in blood, and he isn’t surrounded by Mrs C. Murphy and Fucking Larry and Zoe and Alana and Jared and his own mom as they mourn for a boy he has inadvertently killed. The second is long enough though, because his mom is suddenly bolt upright on the edge of the sofa too. Her arms wrap around him and one hand rubbing soothingly over his spine as she tells him that it’s okay, that he’s okay, that it was just a bad dream, and tries to remind him how to breathe.

Evan shakes his head, inhales shakily through sobs and a too tight throat because although his mom is right, that was just a dream, his reality is not all that different, and that isn’t something he can wake up from.

It isn’t something that will end. 

He’s still sitting there, his heart racing and his breathing choppy and his mom’s hand still running soothingly over his spine when he realises it’s dark outside, and not just the gloomy, stormy kind of dark it had been all day. It’s properly dark. The evening. Or later, maybe. Night. Evan suddenly realises he has no idea at all.

“What’s the time?”

“Um.” His mom’s hand pauses over his spine and she sounds a little caught out by his question, as though maybe she herself had forgotten time was a thing too. She fidgets behind him for a second, trying to get her hair away from the watch still pinned to her scrubs. “It’s just gone half eight.”

Evan blinks, frowns. Wonders where the time has gone because it couldn’t have been later than two when he’d left school, and maybe half three when he’d gotten home, and he can’t have spent more than half an hour crying on the floor with his mom. Well, maybe he could have. Maybe he did. He genuinely doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how long he spent with her on the sofa or watching her make dinner. Or how long he accidentally spent sleeping when he shouldn’t have been sleeping at all.

Why should he have the peace of sleep after what he’s done?

Guilt stirs sickeningly in his gut, and then intensifies when he finally realises what it being later than 6 pm means. “You have class?” His voice is thick and phlegmy but high with concern.

Behind him, his mom sighs. She sounds so sad, and it hurts Evan’s heart. He doesn’t resist when she pulls him close again.

“Evan, honey, that is not even on my radar of priorities at the moment,” she tells him gently but firmly. It’s as though she actually believes sitting beside him on the sofa as he waits to find out if he’s killed someone or not is more important than her degree.

It isn’t.

Not at all.

He’s ruined her life enough already, and he wants so badly to tell her to go and not waste any more time on him because it’s not like her being there will change anything anyway. He doesn’t argue with her though, half because she doesn’t deserve it, and half because he hasn’t the strength.

Later that evening, as they’re sat on the sofa, both staring at a TV show neither of them are watching, the phone in Evan’s pocket vibrates. It’s awfully harsh, awfully abrupt, and feels like a jackhammer crashing against his thigh with his sense dialled up so high.

Cold and terrified and nauseous with guilt, he freezes, stops breathing, stops chewing, stops prodding apathetically at the pasta on his knees. The fork hovers unsteadily above the bowl.

Beside him, his mom freezes too.

“Evan, honey, you okay?”

Evan doesn’t look at her, just swallows his food and gives a tiny, shuddery exhale. Shakily, he places his half-finished meal back on the coffee table. His mom’s eyes flick warily between him and the cheese topped plain pasta he’d been eating as though she’s concerned his reason for discarding his second meal is the same as the reason he’d discarded the first.

He’s not surprised she’s concerned about that; he’d thrown his bowl down and leapt up pretty suddenly half way through their first attempt at dinner because, apparently, pasta bake was a bit of a shock for his already churning stomach and recently underused digestive system. The tomato sauce his mom had used to make it probably hadn’t helped either, but he isn’t going to tell her that.

He isn’t going to tell her how much his stomach is stirring again as he extracts the phone from his pocket with twitchy fingers, either.

It takes the fingerprint scanner three tries to register his print, but that’s still probably fewer attempts than he would have needed to unlock it with the pin code. Not that he really knows why he has a pin code. It isn’t as though there’s anyone who would care enough about his life to try and read his message, and there isn’t exactly anything interesting for them to read either.

It isn’t like he has anyone to tell anything interesting to.

“It’s Zoe,” he mutters when the screen finally turns on, recognising the number the text has been sent from and instantly knowing the owner despite it not being one that’s saved in his phone’s contact list. Apprehensively, his thumb hovers over the notification. “I- what if it’s bad news?”

“Then we deal with it,” his mom reassures him firmly.

Evan swallows. He shakily opens the text, reads the message and then just… starts crying. Which seems to be his go to response to anything at the moment.

“Oh honey, what did it say?” Heidi takes hold of his hand, and then, when all he can do is cry in response, gently pries his phone from his grip to read the reply herself. She frowns when she reads it. “That’s, that’s good news,” she says, frowning, and Evan nods in agreement even though he’s still crying. He isn’t even sure why he’s crying, stress and exhaustion and relief that Connor’s finally been deemed stable and worry because Zoe’s text had said he still hadn’t woken up. 

Evan wonders if she’s still at the hospital. If she’s sat at Connor’s bedside with her mom and her dad, waiting and worrying and hoping that he’s going to be okay when he wakes. He thinks Connor’s mom would probably be sat beside him at least. It’s what his own mom had done for him little over a month ago.

It had hurt her so much to do that for him, he remembers her telling him so at the hospital, and now he has caused that pain onto someone else.

It hurts. His insides ache as though the guilt is physically eating him from the inside. He wonders if it can actually do that like stress can cause stomach ulcers.

“This isn’t your fault, honey,” his mom says quietly from beside him, hitting the reason for his upset on the head. The arm that snakes around his shoulders, while not unexpected, is unwanted and he pulls away.

“I should have told someone,” he protests weakly. “I should have- he might be okay then, if I had.”

“Then why didn’t you?” his mom asks gently, her thumb running over the shoulder of his shirt. It doesn’t sound like she’s judging him, just as though she’s trying to understand what really happened.

“Because… because I owed it to him?” he admits, slowly, wetly. He isn’t even sure why he’s said it, and part of him wants to take it back but some of him is just too tired to care.

His mom frowns at the statement. She looks at him curiously as though trying to read what that means. “Owed it to him how?” she asks quietly. There’s a tremor to her voice as though she’s scared to know. Evan doesn’t blame her. She wouldn’t want to know. She shouldn’t know. She’d hate him if she did. 

Evan hangs his head, looks down at his knees and the cast rests there. It’s stark and white with bold black lettering and stains of red on the padding near his palm. It makes him feel sick and guilty and disgusted, and very suddenly, he just wants it gone, for the whole thing never to have happened.

A tear he didn’t know he’d shed drips off his chin and darkens the fabric of his blue joggers. “I can’t tell you, mom. You’ll hate me.”

His mom shakes her head. “Oh, Evan, I could never hate you” she says, and she sounds so sad, so hurt, so scared, that Evan can’t help but pull away and curl up against the arm of the sofa because he just doesn’t want to cause her any more pain. She doesn’t deserve it.

“You would if you knew what I’d tried to do,” he insists, voice choked and cracking and the fingers of his right hand shaking violently as they pick at already ruined fibreglass. “You should. If you knew how- how broken I am.”

Beside him, his mom sighs softly, shakily. Her eyes are on his cast too, and Evan can all but hear the cogs in her brain churning, things slowly, gently, clicking into place. “I already know you, Evan,” she says eventually, voice wet and thick and hopeless. Her eyes are shiny and achingly sad and focused on him, but Evan can’t bear to look at them. He can’t bear to look her in they eye as he admits to her what he’s done.

How broken he really is. 

He thinks she probably already knows, though, her eyes are already wet.

“I’m so sorry, mom,” he half says, half cries. His voice is shaking and thick with phlegm. “This summer I just… I felt so _alone_.”

His mom sniffles. Her breathing is shaky and wet. She’s crying and he hates it. Hates that she’s crying because of him. Hates that she’s hurting because of what he tried to do.

“That’s what you said in that letter,” she manages eventually. Her voice sounds pained as though the words hurt her to say. “You… you wrote that, right? That letter on the sideboard.”

Evan hangs his head. Watches his tears darken his joggers in patches. A hand, softer and smaller that his own folds itself over his. It’s shaking, tremoring lightly. This time, he doesn’t pull away.

“I didn’t know you were hurting like that. That you felt so bad.” There’s a pause, and a choked sort of exhale, and when Evan looks over, he finds her eyes wet and blotchy and her cheeks streaked with tears just like his own. “I didn’t know,” she repeats, sounding so sad and so, so hopeless. She sounds like Evan feels. “Why didn’t I know?”

He shrugs, hating that he is the reason for her upset. For her guilt. “I didn’t say.”

She shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have needed to. I should have noticed. I mean, I guess- I knew something wasn’t right about you just falling from so high, you’re normally so careful, and I knew… I already knew you weren’t happy -” her voice cracks, breaks- “but I just- I think I just wanted you to be okay so badly I just decided you were. That it was just an accident.”

Evan looks up at her, catches her blue eyes before he swallows.

“It wasn’t an accident, mom,” he admits, wetly, honestly, and it hurts so much to say what he’s saying and to see the heartbreak in his mom’s eyes, but also, it kind of feels like a relief not to have to lie to her about it anymore. “I let go. I- I just… I just didn’t know what else to do. I felt so alone. All the time. I knew no one would notice if anything happened except for you, and-and I knew it would be better off if I was gone. I’m such a burden. I- I cost so much with therapy and drugs and none of it even works. It doesn’t help. I don’t- I’m no better than I was before and I know it isn’t ever going to be better. I’m just so broken mom, and I’ll always be broken, a-and alone and I just… I just didn’t want to be so alone anymore.” Evan stops and finds he’s crying, these big, sad tears just spilling from his eyes, racing over his blotchy cheeks and falling from his chin. They land on the shoulder of her hoodie as she takes him in her arms.

“You’re not a burden to me, Evan. You could never be a burden. I love you. More than anything in the world,” she tells him through her tears. “And you’re not alone either, honey. You’re not. I promise you. I know it might feel like that sometimes because I’m never here but you’re not. I love you so much, Evan. I just- I’m so sorry. I- I know I’ve messed up. I messed up so much when you were little. I was around so little after your dad left, and I’m messing up now and the thing is I know I’m going to mess up again in the future.

“But I am here for you, Evan, I’m not going anywhere. I love you, so much. More than you could ever imagine. And I am so, so glad you’re still here for me to tell you that.” Her voice breaks, cracking audibly around her tears, and the remaining shards of Evan’s fracture too because she looks so heartbroken, so utterly devastated and he can’t help the renewed sobs that claw their way from his chest.

She holds him to her as he sobs, as she sobs too, openly crying into the bubbly fabric of the blanket he’s still got wrapped around his shoulders. It hurts him that she’s crying, that she’s crying because of him too, because he’s so sad and broken and lonely and she hadn’t noticed, because it turns out the accident she had very nearly lost him to so recently before hadn’t been as much of an accident as she thought, hoped, it had been.

“Things will get better, Evan,” his mom tells him through her tears, her arms still wrapped around him and her hands holding onto his shirt through the blanket. “I know that might not seem believable right now, honey, I know, but one day- one day you’ll feel better. Maybe not even soon, but one day, I promise.”

Evan wants to believe her, he really does, he just isn’t sure he can. He just isn’t sure that there’s a way for him to come out of everything that has happened feeling in any sense better. Maybe that’s still an improvement, though, he realises as he sits curled up on the sofa and cries in his mom’s arms, since barely a few hours ago, he hadn’t thought he, or Connor, would be able to come out from it at all.

But maybe, just maybe, they will.


	21. A much needed conversation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is actually the last chapter for sure! The epilogue is nearly done, too, just one final scene to write, and I'm kind of sad about it, I've enjoyed writing this! 
> 
> Again, thanks for all the kudos, comments, and bookmarks, and thanks to everyone who's still reading this. 
> 
> If you want to find me on tumblr, I'm bumblie-bee, and my ask box is always open for questions or prompts, if anyone has any! 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy this final proper chapter!

For most of his life, Evan hadn’t minded hospitals, and he supposes that’s because he had little reason to.

He’d understood why others disliked them, of course, understood that they were places of sadness and pain and loss, but until recently, he hadn’t had any experience of that himself. There had only been one occasion where he’d been to the hospital at a patient before that summer, and even that hadn’t been an overly traumatic experience. He’d been six when he ended up in the ER after a particularly impressive Jared-induced tumble off the jungle gym, and all he remembers of the trip is a doctor gently prodding his bumped head and shining a light in his eyes and then giving him a clean bill of health and a sticker. He remembers his mom letting him pick a new book from the Walmart on the way home as a reward for being so brave, too.

He had spent a lot of time in the hospital when he was younger, though, passed hours colouring and reading and playing with his trucks in the nurses’ break room on the third floor after his mom decided leaving her seven year old unattended there was marginally better than leaving him unattended at home. It was an odd way to spend his weekends, he’d known so even at the time, but it hadn’t been bad and so he hadn’t really minded. He’d rather have been at Jared’s sure, Jared’s house was fun, and Jared had a Wii and a trampoline, but the hospital staff room wasn’t a bad alternative on the days when Janet Kleinman was too busy to have him. 

Besides, his mom couldn’t leave so easily if he was in the same building as her, and that was a definite bonus.

Surprisingly, none of the staff had seemed to mind there was a seven year old in their break room as long as he was quiet, they understood his mom’s dilemma, he assumes, and a fair few of them seemed to like having him there. There were a couple in particular who fussed over him whenever they saw him, and one who brought him puzzles to do and books to read and another who always snuck him candy when they thought his mom wasn’t looking. They’d thought he was cute, and looking back, Evan objectively agreed.

There were enough photos around the house that Evan knew he’d been cute as a kid. He isn’t cute in any sense of the word now, but back then his chubby cheeks had been fitting and his hair had been properly blonde rather than the dirty sort of colour it had become as he’d grown. Back then, he’d worn it long enough that it was kind of curly, too, angelic, almost. He doesn’t wear it that long anymore; the loose curls had looked sweet when he was little, but now they just give him the unfortunate appearance of a recently brushed poodle.

Well, maybe they wouldn’t if he worked out how to tame them, but that’d be an effort.

Back then, when he was seven, he’d been more sociable, too. He was young enough that he’d yet to become so awfully awkward or too anxiety riddled to form a proper sentence, and so although he’d still been quiet and shy and nervous, he’d also been polite and cheerful and engaged and would chat to the staff he knew well. They’d liked him, his mom’s colleagues, although Evan knows for sure they wouldn’t like him anymore. 

Evan doesn’t like the hospital anymore, either, he finds. It makes his chest tight and his hands sweat, and his fingers start a path to his mouth before he remembers he isn’t meant to be biting his nails bloody any more. He’s meant to be getting better.

There are memories associated with the hospital now, memories that aren’t quite as neutral as Saturdays spent in the nurses break room on the third floor. While he doesn’t remember huge portions of his time there over the summer, the morphine and concussion and general exhaustion can be blamed for that, he remembers enough of it to know it hadn’t been a good time. He remembers pain, and confusion, and panic, and sadness, and the upset of his mom as she’d sat beside him. He remembers why he’d been there, too, and he doesn’t really want to think of that.

He’s been forced to think about that enough in the past few days.

Evan shakes the thoughts from his head and focuses on solving the other reason he’s now decided he hates hospitals, and that is the lack of any sort of sensible signage.

It’s easy enough to follow the directions to the ER, or to x-ray, although Evan knows his way there by now, or to the shop or canteen, but if you’re going to the Willow ward, well, good luck. Evan glares at a sign as he passes and adds whoever decided to name the wards after flowers rather using floor numbers and the alphabet to his list of people he would quite like to go back in time and shake some sense into.

Eventually he finds it. It’s on the fourth floor.

“Um, I’m here to visit someone?” he says to the nurse sitting at the desk beside the door. It lilts like a question, like he’s asking permission. He kind of is, really; he doesn’t feel like he has the right to be here even though Connor had been the one to text and ask to speak to him. Evan hadn’t been expecting the message, hadn’t thought he’d get another from Connor ever again.

The nurse smiles kindly despite his stupid question and asks for the patient’s name and then his own. She signs him off into the visitor’s book, and then directs him down a corridor and tells him to make sure he’s cleaned his hands with the gel on the wall before he enters.

The door to Connor’s room is propped open when Evan finds it, and when he pokes his head inside, he finds it thankfully empty save for its designated occupant sitting on the bed. He’d feared it wouldn’t be, feared Connor’s parents or Zoe would be there, too, and he’d have to make small talk with the family of the boy who very nearly ended up dead because of him.

Well, not entirely because of him, but, still.

Connor doesn’t react when Evan hesitantly raps his knuckles against the wooden frame of the door, and he doesn’t look up when he awkwardly clears his throat and calls his name, either. Evan finds himself frowning, because while it hadn’t been the loudest knock or call, both had been loud enough the Connor should have heard from his bed.

Maybe he has, and he’s just ignoring him on purpose. That would figure, since Evan probably deserves to be ignored. No, scratch that, he definitely deserves to be ignored. Although he can’t entirely work out why Connor would text him, ask him to come, and then ignore him. It might be just to make his anger with Evan known, make him uncomfortable and guilty and-

Evan’s still staring when Connor’s eyes flick up. They widen in a way that Evan would probably find comical if they weren’t so dull and heavy lidded. It’s as though he really hadn’t noticed Evan was there.

Startled by Connor’s start, Evan freezes, too, and then finds his eyebrows furrowing in confusion because judging by his expression, Connor really hadn’t heard the knock or call at all. It doesn’t make sense. Evan knows that it doesn’t make sense, and he wonders why, tries to work out why Connor had been able to hear before and can’t now. Milliseconds later, his reeling brain comes to the terrifying conclusion that maybe the incident in the park had ruined Connor’s hearing somehow.

He doesn’t even know if that’s possible, but he feels sick all the same.

Asides from not having heard him approach, though, Connor does seem to be at least physically okay, and he tries to focus on that. He isn’t slumped and unconscious and struggling to breathe like he had been before, and he isn’t lying weak and semi-conscious in the bed like Evan had feared, but rather sat on top and wearing his own clothes instead of one of the papery gowns hospitals seem so fond of. He doesn’t look to be hooked up to the machines as Evan had assumed he would be, either; the only one in the room is turned off and pushed into the far corner of the room. 

Which is good, Evan reminds himself, better than he had even been hoping for, but it still doesn’t explain the mystery of why Connor hadn’t heard him knock.

He’s still fretting over the possibility of his actions somehow ruining Connor’s hearing when Connor’s tense posture relaxes, and he loops the ear buds hidden by his hair from his ears.

“Oh, it’s you,” he says by way of greeting, mismatched eyes scouring his bed for his phone. Evan can briefly hear the tinny echo of his music until it’s paused. It’s a heavy, angry sounding song he’s playing, and one Evan doesn’t recognise. Although thinking about it, he isn’t all that sure why he thought he would. Connor’s music taste is old rock and punk, maybe, Evan thinks, whereas his is… well, he doesn’t really have one. There are songs he likes and songs he doesn’t, but he very infrequently puts music on for himself. The always listen to whatever Jared wants to listen to when he gets a lift.

“You can come in, you know?” Connor says bluntly, his voice a little scratchy, as he pulls the wiring of his earphones back through his hoodie.

Evan’s gaze falls to the floor and his cheeks heat at the realisation he’d been staring awkwardly from the doorway for much longer than is socially acceptable. It takes a second longer for his eddying brain to realise his hand is still raised, poised to knock again. It drops, catches hold of his hem.

“No, I know, i-it just, seemed rude to just you know, walk in?” he awkwardly half says, half asks, and steps into the room. “And then I didn’t know, I thought you might not want to see me or-or something?”

Connor glances up, frowns in confusion. “I asked you to come.”

“N-no, I know,” Evan agrees as he picks at his cuticles. “I just- I thought you might be messing with me because you were angry with me? Which if you are that’s okay, I-”

“I’m not angry with you.”

“Oh, good.” His voice comes out so flimsy he flushes, and although it makes him want to look away, he finds himself staring again instead. His eyes are wide as they take in the dark hoodie with the sleeves pulled down over his bandages and the too pale skin and the dark bruise-like circles under his eyes. They’re heavy set, Connors mismatched eyes, and kind of dead looking and pinched into a frown that matches the rest of his expression. Despite his words, he does look angry.

For a second, he says nothing, then just when Evan’s deciding he needs to say something before his anxiety levels hit critical, he sighs.

“Well, actually, no I am angry with you,” he admits, his tone frank and a little annoyed. There’s no fire to it though, just resignation. “I’m really, really pissed off with you, but like, don’t take it personally.”

Evan stares, swallows, tries to get his head around that. He understands why Connor is pissed off with him, knows that although his actions kind of lead to Connor being in that forest, they also lead to the paramedics getting there in time to save him. There was no hope of them finding him if Evan hadn’t known where he might be.

He still doesn’t quite know what to do with the information that Connor had gone back to the same place he’d gone to before to try again, why he’d gone to sit beneath the tree Evan himself had so very nearly died beneath, and he almost wants to ask Connor. He’d know the answer, know why he’d tried in a place Evan would know to look despite not wanting to be found. It might just be because hadn’t considered Evan would know he needed to even look to find him before it was too late, but there’s also the chance he’d gone there because there was still a small portion of him that had hoped he might be found.

Evan just doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know how to put any of that into words, either, and so instead of asking any of the questions he has or offering any comfort, he ends up awkwardly muttering, “I take everything personally. It’s like, my thing,”. Which sucks, really. What a useless comment.

Connor’s lip twitches at his words though, and he huffs in what might be amusement. Evan decides maybe it hadn’t been such a bad thing to say, if it had cheered Connor up even a little. His laugh hadn’t really been a laugh, but it had been something close, and he finds it loosens the knot in his too tight gut just a fraction.

“So, um, how- how are you?” he asks when Connor makes no move to say anything else.

He doesn’t make a move to look up either, just shrugs a little, pulls a face.

“Alive, for a start,” he says after a second, and although his eyes are fixed on his hands, he must have seen Evan’s flinch because his lips twist a little apologetically. “No lasting damage, like, physically anyway. I was lucky, apparently.”

He scoffs a little humourless laugh that Evan understands entirely. He thinks back to their conversation beneath the tree in the park near his house where Connor had pointed out you only think you’re lucky if the outcome was what you wanted it to be. Evan hadn’t known what he’d wanted the outcome to be when Connor had said that the first time, but this time, he knows for sure.

“I’m pleased you’re okay, even if you’re not,” he insists, quietly but firmly.

Very briefly, those heavy-set, mismatched eyes flick up to meet his, and then Connor looks away and huffs under his breath as though he doesn’t quite believe what Evan has said is true.

“Connor, I really am.”

There’s another sigh, a disbelieving sort of grimace at his hands, and then, “You haven’t been at school.”

Evan frowns at the change in topic. It’s a deflection tactic, he knows, but he isn’t all that sure whether he should follow Connor’s lead away from the elephant in the room or not. It takes him a second longer than it should for him to decide what to reply.

“No, I haven’t,” he agrees eventually, distractedly wondering who Connor has got that information from. Probably Zoe, he thinks, but he isn’t sure why Zoe would have told him that or even have been looking out for him enough to notice he wasn’t at school. She hates him, he’s sure, blames him for what very nearly happened. Maybe she’d been looking out for him to tell him so.

“Why?” Connor asks. He actually sounds a little curious, like maybe he cares.

Evan grimaces, sighs a little, decides to roll with it. Decides to be open, too, because he can’t exactly expect Connor to be if he isn’t. Besides, Connor has seen him at his worst, already knows him well enough to know his brain is a fucking mess.

There’s also the point that after the week he’s had, his defences are so battered he might tell his story to the checkout lady at their local Walmart is she pressed him enough. 

“Because, I, um… because I told my mum. About what happened in the summer,” he explains after a second. “And, so, I’ve been, well. Here. A bit. For appointments and things, and then at home.” He shrugs awkwardly, tries to make it look like he’s holding it together better than he is. “I got a new therapist, and I’m- um, I’m on new meds. So…”

“Is it helping?” Connor’s still frowning at his hands, but he sounds like he’s genuinely interested. Evan doesn’t know why he would be, doesn’t know why he should care, but he answers all the same.

“Not really,” he admits, “b-but Jamie- my new therapist- said it might take a while. He’s nice. I like him. He wants to do some joint sessions with mom too, and I don’t know. I’m half terrified and half- I think it might help? Maybe a bit. It’s kind of tense with her at the moment. She’s upset she didn’t notice what happened in the summer o-or say anything sooner even though she knew something was wrong and, um- she’s- I think she’s worried, too. Th-that I’m going to- to try something as soon as her back is turned. I said I wouldn’t, and it isn’t like they’d have let me go home if they thought I would but-” Evan breaks off, realising he’s rambling unnecessarily. It’s kind of inappropriate too, considering where he is and who he’s with. “So, um, what about you?” 

Connor looks at him for a long moment, like he’s processing all of that maybe, and then shrugs.

“I’m here until tomorrow and then my parents are sending me somewhere to get better.” The sentence ends with a scoff as though he doesn’t think that’s possible.

Maybe he doesn’t, Evan isn’t all that sure he could ever be truly better than he is either, but when he’d admitted that to Jamie, he’d nodded and said that was normal, and then asked Evan if he thought that fear of failing was a reason not to try. If things could even be just a little better, wouldn’t that be worth it, he’d asked.

Evan hadn’t been hopefully there was much that could be done for his mess of a brain when he’d reluctantly agreed, but he’d agreed all the same. He knows his anxiety had been worse before, too, and they’d managed to at least fractionally improve that side of his mess of a brain.

“It might help?” he tells Connor quietly, uncertainly.

On the bed, Connor scoffs a laugh and glances up through his hair. It’s straggly, and messy and in desperate need of a brush, but like that, it does function remarkably well as a shield between him and the world. “Not sure sharing circles are gonna do much for the shit show that’s my brain,” he scoffs, sounding bitter.

“Yeah, maybe not,” Evan agrees, because Connor certainly has a point there. “B-but talking to someone might help, like, maybe letting your feelings out, a-and- um and not that I’m saying you need drugging b-but that- sometimes that helps, too.” Under Connor’s sceptical stare, Evan lets out a nervous cough of a laugh.

“You didn’t see me before I started Xanax,” he jokes feebly, trying to smile. Trying to make Connor smile because it hurts to see his eyes so dead and sad. “I um- I had a panic attack in Walmart once because a worker there wanted me to try a sample of that Peanut Butter Cup Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream when it first came out, a-and I just couldn’t deal with saying no to her.” The tale comes out a little flimsy, but Connor still huffs what he thinks might be an amused sort of exhale and his lips twist up a fraction at one side.

“Is peanut butter that bad?” he asks after a moment, voice scratchy and sort of awkward but lilted with curiosity. It’s as though he’s trying. 

Evan takes that as a win. Smiling a little, he shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I’m allergic.”

Connor’s head comes up, his gaze finding Evan as his eyebrows lift towards his hairline. A second later, a rough sounding bark of amusement cuts through the tension remaining in the air a little more. “And you still considered eating it?”

Cheeks flushed, but insides warmed, Evan sighs. “Well I’m not like, _deadly_ allergic,” he explains sheepishly. “I just get hives. And they have shelves of antihistamines at Walmart, so it w-was a carefully calculated alternative.”

“It’s still ridiculous,” Connor scoffs, smirking a little.

Evan finds himself laughing awkwardly. “Yeah, I know.”

A moment passes, and then Connor huffs a laugh of his own. “Oh god, what if I’d have bought two M&M Mcflurries?” he asks, brushing his hair out of his eyes, and after everything that’s happened, it takes Evan a moment to realise he’s referring to the day a few weeks before when they’d eaten McDonalds in Zoe’s car. “You’d probably just have eaten it, wouldn’t you?”

Flushing, Evan averts his eyes and tries to laugh casually. He neither denies nor confirms that he probably would just have eaten around the M&Ms and hoped for the best because Connor has told him more times than he can count just how bad he is at lying.

“Fucking hell, Hansen.” Connor shakes his head, smirking a little, and then the moment passes as quickly as it had come. Sighing heavily, he leans back into his pillows and frowns up at the ceiling. The dead, melancholy look is back in his eyes, Evan notices, hopelessness replacing the flicker of life the brief spell amusement had brought, and a thoughtful furrow has pinched the brow above them.

“I don’t think my fucked up brain has ever made me do anything anyone could laugh about,” he admits bitterly. “I’ve just yelled and smashed things and threatened to kill people. Well, mostly Zoe. I’m the reason her bedroom door has a fucking lock.”

His words are blunt, filled with anger and pain, and Evan swallows, silent opens then closes his mouth, entirely unsure of what to say to that. He turns out not to need to say anything, because Connor exhales and then glances at him from his reclined position. 

“I didn’t think you’d come.” His words are softly spoken, aimed at the ceiling and more than a little sad.

Evan frowns. Swallows thickly at the hopeless tone. “I said I was going to,” he says equally quietly, shrugging a little as though the fact he’s there is a given.

“Yeah,” Connor says, drawing out the word, “but people make shit up just to please people sometimes, so…”

“Oh,” Evan breathes, because that he understands. He’s been promised enough Taco Tuesdays that never materialised to make the feeling more than known. “I-I wasn’t though. I wanted to see you.” There’s a pause and then cautiously, he asks, “Did you actually think I was just messing with you when I said I’d come?”

It takes a second, but eventually, Connor looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “No, you’re too nice for that. But you’re, you know…” he trails off, shoots Evan a look he eventually understands to mean ‘but you’re an anxious mess of a human who can’t say no and can barely make it through the school corridors without having some sort of breakdown.’ Well, maybe he’d have said it in kinder words, but still, Evan knows that’s what he’s implying.

It hurts, but it’s true.

Evan shakes his head. 

“I meant it when I said I’d come,” he repeats, and then tries to smile, “I-I did have to like, stop and take a Xanax in the bathroom b-but more because I was worried your family would be here.”

“Scared of meeting Fucking Larry?” Connor quips. He’s almost smiling.

“N-no actually. More… um, more Zoe. I think she hates me now. She blames me,” he adds at Connor’s frown.

“Ah.” Connor rolls his eyes back to the ceiling. There’s a moment of silence, and then, “This wasn’t your fault.”

Evan grimaces, shakes his head at the floor. “I knew you were struggling, and I didn’t tell,” he says quietly, hating that he’s managed to bring the conversation back to this but also… well, he feels it needs to be said. He’s guilty, and he needs Connor to know that.

“My parents knew already,” Connor replies, shrugging a little. “Zoe found me last time I tried, so it wasn’t like my shitty mental health was a big fucking secret.”

“I still should have said something.”

Connor sighs and sits up again. “Look, Hansen,” he says, tone hard, firm, but not angry, as such. “I know you feel bad, but like, I didn’t tell either. And your mom didn’t know.”

Evan glares at window and sighs, frustrated. He wants to argue, to point out that it wasn’t the same because it wasn’t him that had tried to take his own life, but deep in his heart he knows it could have been. He doesn’t know how long he could have kept going for, and even if he didn’t choose to end his own life intentionally, it wasn’t like he’d been doing all that much to keep himself going either.

He hadn’t been sleeping, hadn’t been eating, hadn’t been looking after himself even though he knows he should have been.

He’d known he hadn’t been doing great physically, knew his jeans and khakis were looser round the waist than ever before, knew his face looked much too pale in the mirror, knew his eyes were too bruised and heavy, knew his head shouldn’t have been spinning so much whenever he stood. He’d known it all, but he just hadn’t cared. He hadn’t cared at all.

His mom had cared, though. She’d cried when she first realised how bad it had got, cried again when he’d had a check up.

She’s cried a lot over the past week, Evan’s seen her, heard her at night, and he hates it. 

“You got a new cast.”

Jumping a little, Evan starts from his thoughts and then, when he’s finally processed what’s been said, looks down at the pristine white fibreglass on his arm. It’s weird to see it so fresh and plain and void of writing. There’s no red staining this cast, either, which is definitely a bonus. It’s nearly as much of a bonus as the fact that for the first time in a while, the broken arm inside doesn’t ache.

“Yeah,” he agrees, frowning when his voice comes out too tight. “It- wasn’t healing right s-so they had to reset it. I-I’d rather they hadn’t. It hurt. Quite a lot, actually.”

He frowns at the memory, and at the fact he’d been so convinced the pain was a product of his shitty brain, he hadn’t even considered something might actually be wrong with his arm. He’d been wrong though, it turns out, and an x-ray revealed that the pain hadn’t been in wasn’t caused by a failing of his brain, but rather by something having jolted his still healing bones out of position. He thinks he knows what, remembers the bolt of pain he’d felt as the cast had hit against the floor on the first day of school, but he isn’t going to admit that to anyone.

Connor catches his eye for a moment. There’s a funny sort of frown on his lips, like he doesn’t like the idea of Evan in pain, and Evan isn’t all that sure how he feels about that. It was him who fucked up his own arm, after all, he doesn’t deserve the sympathy. He isn’t even all that sure why he’s even admitted all of that, he hadn’t needed to, but somehow Connor just draws the truth right out of him. Or maybe it just falls out of him. His defences are still battered by Connor’s attempt and his own admission to his mom and the intense sessions he’s been having with Jamie. 

“I thought you’d just got tired of my name,” Connor says, jolting him from his thoughts.

When Evan looks up, he finds Connor pulling a forced sort of smile. It’s one that looks tired and worn and doesn’t quite meet his eyes, but one that makes Evan think he might have been teasing. Or kind of teasing anyway, since he’s pretty sure Connor still half thinks he got his arm re-plastered just to get rid of the massive lettering he’d scrawled across it.

His eyes widen a little. “I-oh, no. No, I wouldn’t- that isn’t why,” he explains in a rush. “I… kind of miss it, actually? It was nice… t-to know someone cared enough to, you know. Sign it.”

Connor fixes him with a look, and then cocks his head. “You still have that sharpie?”

Evan laughs a little, grimaces in amusement. “I don’t just, like, carry sharpies around with me?” he points out. He’s weird sure, but not that weird.

“You did.” Connor raises an eyebrow.

Shaking his head, Evan sighs. “Mom gave it to me,” he explains, “so I could ask people to sign it. As like. A conversation starter or something.”

Connor actually laughs at that, his eyes crinkling a little. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

For a second, the room goes quiet. Connor looks at him, something calculating in his eyes, and then reaches over and presses the call button beside his bed.

“What’s wrong?” Evan asks immediately, a little alarmed. “Are you okay?”

Connor smiles almost teasingly, but before Evan can ask what on earth that’s meant to mean, a dark haired nurse has appeared in the doorway.

“Everything okay in here?” she asks calmly, a curious smile on her lips as she looks between the two boys.

Evan finds himself frowning because clearly the answer is ‘no’ seeing as Connor has just pressed a button to summon her help, but he doesn’t say anything. It isn’t his place.

“Yeah, I was just wondering if you had a sharpie?” Connor asks her politely. The nurse frowns, clearly a little confused by the request, just as Evan’s eyes widen in realisation.

“It’s for his cast.”

The nurse’s gaze follows Connor’s gaze to Evan, takes in the broken arm he’s holding to his stomach.

“Oh I see!” she says brightly, “I’m sure I can find you one. Give me a minute.”

She disappears from the doorway, and Evan turns back to Connor.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says quietly, frowning a little. It isn’t like he doesn’t appreciate what Connor’s doing, but he hadn’t been expecting it. He hadn’t expected Connor not to hate him, even. That’s what he’d been prepared for when he’d arrived.

Turns out he’d been wrong though, because Connor’s smiling at him tiredly, his eyes still sad and hopeless but a small, almost satisfied uplift at the corner of his lips. 

“I know,” he says, shrugging as though it’s nothing.

The pens arrive, one blue, one red, and one green, along with an apology about the missing black.

Connor mulls over them momentarily, his expression a little pinched in thought. Evan watches him for a second, and then blurts, “Not red,” before he can stop himself.

There’s a confused sort of frown on Connor’s lips, but be nods all the same and selects the blue. He uncaps it, then pauses, pen in hand. “Are you gonna…”

Evan flushes, mutters an apology Connor rolls his eyes at, and steps towards the bed. His hand is shaking a little when he holds out his cast.

Unlike the time in the computer room, Connor takes Evan’s arm gently, his hands not urgent or angry or abrupt, and when he signs his name, it’s smaller and neater and looks much less like he’s just determined to make one last mark on the world. It looks like the normal sort of signature a friend would write on a cast, and Evan’s stomach swoops a little at the sight of it.

Connor doesn’t just write his name like Evan had expected him to, either. He keeps the cast for longer, writes more words Evan can’t quite read from upside down, and then changes pen and draws something small and green beside the words.

When the cast is released, Evan looks at it, and then feels his heart do a funny little leap because underneath Connor’s name in writing so small he can barely read it, he’s added ‘Keep holding on, Hansen’ and drawn a tiny, delicate picture of a tree.

Evan stares at it. Feels his breathing catch in his throat because while Connor hadn’t needed to write that, he had. It’s… he doesn’t really know how to describe it, doesn’t know the name for the feeling fluttering in his stomach, but he thinks it’s a good one.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” Connor asks eventually, sounding unsure.

Evan nods, still staring. He swallows. Looks up and finds Connor watching him thought cautious eyes. He looks like he still isn’t certain what he’s done is right or not, if Evan’s going to hate what’s there. And in a way, he thinks he should, knows it makes what he tried to do a little more obvious but somehow, he doesn’t. He couldn’t.

“Y-yeah. It’s… it’s okay,” he rasps, his voice suddenly thick, and then glances back at the words on his arm. They show understanding, he thinks, from the one person that could possibly understand, the one person who knows what happened, what he tried to do, and truly knows how it is to feel like he had. Like he still does. They’re important, those words, because they somehow make him feel a little less alone.

“And I will,” he says to Connor, “I’ll try to-to hold on or… I’m really going to try.” He pauses, thinks. “B-but, um, Connor?” A long second passes Connor’s hardened, mismatched eyes look up to catch his own. “It’s not just me. Y-you need to keep holding on, too, just- just so you know.”

For a moment, Connor says nothing, just stares, holds his gaze. Then he sighs, nods a little. It’s a tiny nod, barely perceivable even though Evan’s looking. But it’s still a nod, and that’s better than what Evan could have got. “Okay,” he agrees quietly, his expression bleak, his eyes still dead, and resignation in his tone. “I’ll try.”


	22. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so, here it is, the end. Thank you to everyone who's read this, and is still reading this through all the delays. I'm actually a little sad it's finished, but I'm pleased it is. It's the longest fic I've ever written, and has come a long way from the one-shot it started off as last April. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy :)

Time passes, and just as he said he would, Evan does hold on.

Things aren’t easy, not at all at first, but he still somehow makes it through the hours and days when he wants nothing more than to give up.

He tries, too. Tries to get better.

He’s honest with his new therapist even though he’s terrified it’s going to result in him being committed, and he takes his meds as instructed even though he hates that he depends on them, and he eats the meals his mom puts in front of him despite the low-grade nausea which lingers obstinately in his stomach.

He tries for Connor, because he said he would, and he tries for his mom because he really owes her that at least after everything he’s put her through. She’s still struggling with it, he knows, he can tell by the way she suddenly spends so much of her time just watching him as though worried he might slip and disappear if she takes her eyes off him for too long. Evan understands why she does it, understands that she’s terrified of losing him, but it still hurts his heart that she feels she needs to.

On the Monday after he sees Connor, Alana visits to drop off the schoolwork he’s been set for the holidays. In true Alana fashion, she invites herself in, makes them both a mug of tea, and then settles on the sofa to talk to him. He doesn’t mind her intrusion, sits beside her and lets her tell him about school and lessons and what they’ve covered in class and offers her help if he needs any help with catching up. For once, he isn’t lying to her when he agrees to ask if he needs anything.

He doesn’t lie when she asks how he’s doing either, not really. He tries to be honest and give her an answer that’s meaningful, but in the end the words don’t form, and he can manage nothing more than a helpless shrug in reply. She seems to accept that for what it means, puts her hand on his arm, ignores how he flinches and tells him it’s okay if he doesn’t want to talk, but that she’s more than happy to listen if he ever wants her to.

It’s grey and drizzly on Wednesday afternoon when Jared arrives at his door and says they need to talk, and Evan frowns and wants to say no but invites Jared inside all the same. There’s tension heavy in the air as they sit on the sofa together, Jared staring at the muted TV and Evan picking at his cast even though he knows he shouldn’t. They sit in that heavy silence for a long while before Evan says “I thought you wanted to talk” and the conversation reluctantly starts. Even then, it’s a stunted conversation, tense and awkward because Evan’s still so, so angry with his family friend, and Jared seems to be equally angry in return. Well, half angry, half confused, Evan decides eventually.

Jared apologises for the car ride, clearly having heard that Connor was more likely to harm himself than someone else all along, and then points out that Evan’s angry with him. It’s an open ended statement, more of a question, and Evan nods and draws a breath and then tries his best to explain why. Jared sits and listens as Evan tells of the hurt Jared’s been causing for so many years, talks to him more honestly than he has done since middle school just after his dad left. 

For a reason even he doesn’t understand, he’s even honest when he admits to Jared how he really broke his arm over the summer.

It isn’t a story he’d intended to tell; it’s one that slipped out with the rest of his free-flowing emotions, but it probably is one he needed to tell all the same.

Jared just stares at him for a moment afterwards, his expression twisted as though he can’t quite comprehend what Evan has just said, and then he pales, almost alarmingly so, and his breathing shudders and his eyes take on the watery sort of appearance he always blames on allergies. Evan says nothing, he has nothing left to say, just sits on the couch and waits for Jared to process what he’s said. He does, eventually, and then unexpectedly reaches out to take Evan’s uncasted hand and tells him in a quiet, unnaturally sober sort of tone that he's so, so pleased what Evan tried didn't work.

It’s quiet between them for a long while afterwards, and when Jared goes, he goes without teasing or snide comments, and says he’ll see Evan soon, but that if he wants him before, he’s at the end of the phone. He says he always will be, and Evan should always remember that.

On the Friday, Evan has a therapy session with his mom, and it’s honestly awful, genuinely the most exhausting and painful session he’s ever had. After two hours of brutal honesty, they both come out shaky and hurt and red eyed from crying, but just as Evan had hoped, it does help to crack the wall of tension that has grown between them over years.

Things still aren’t great between them afterwards, but they are better, and Evan thinks maybe one day they could be okay once again.

Things are better with his brain, too, he realises one morning as he sits on the edge of the bath and fights with the damp cling film on his arm. There are still more bad days than good, too many days when Evan doesn’t want to get out of bed, where he just wants to hide from the world under his duvet, days when he could swear his mom is just there because she knows she needs to be with his mental state so fragile because what sort of parent would she be if she wasn’t, but he’s trying, and that’s more than he could say before. He’s trying to be better, not for his sake, really, but he’s trying all the same, and he hopes more than anything that Connor is trying too.

Heidi returns late from work the Monday after their therapy appointment, but Evan’s more surprised she’s home at all. She has school on Monday evenings, and although she hadn’t been for the whole of last two weeks, she hadn’t been to work either, and he’d just assumed she’d be going back to class when she finally trusted him enough to leave him unsupervised just like she had with work.

But, apparently not, it seems.

Evan still doesn’t know why she’s late home though, and when he asks her over dinner, she says something had come up at work and then very quickly changes the subject when he tries to ask her what.

She’s keeping something from him, Evan knows, and that she is and she never had before kind of hurts. She’s always been open with him, too open, sometimes, but open all the same.

After dinner, while the telly is one and they’re watching an episode of something Evan’s too distracted to pay much attention to, he asks when she’s planning on returning to school.

“It’s not like I don’t like this, but I just… You’ll get behind,” he explains quickly when she turns to him with an expression full of hurt and a flash of something else he can’t quite read.

For a second, his mom just looks at him, and then her expression lightens. It looks a little forced.

“Oh, well, January. I went to see my tutor after work and we’ve agreed that it’s probably best if I skip the rest of this semester, start the modules again in the new term,” she explains, a light sort of smile on her lips as though what she’s saying doesn’t bother her at all.

As though it’s nothing.

It isn’t nothing though, and Evan knows his eyes are suddenly very wide in alarm. His chest feels much too tight. “Mom, that’s- you can’t-”

“It’s okay, Evan,” his mom interrupts calmly, reaching out and putting her hand on his knee. “They’ve agreed not to charge me any extra fees, and it’s only going to be an extra few months which isn’t very long really. And honestly, honey, I think this is what’s for the best. For both of us. I… I don’t want to leave you on your own so much, anymore. It wasn’t fair of me to do that to you before when you were little, and it wouldn’t be fair of me to leave you alone all the time again now. You’re trying to get better, I know, but you shouldn’t have to do it alone. I should be there to support you. I want to be there to support you.”

“Mom-” Evan starts quietly, desperately, wanting to tell her she shouldn’t be doing this for him but finding himself entirely unable to find the words. He can’t really tell if he trails off or if he’s interrupted by his mom she continues.

“But also, Evan, this break isn’t just for you. I… I haven’t been coping all that well, either,” she explains quietly, “It isn’t just you that’s been having trouble sleeping.”

Evan looks up again at that and his mom lets out a sad sort of chuckle at his surprised expression.

“How else did you think I knew you’d been up at strange hours?” she asks, and he just looks away and shrugs because, honestly, he hadn’t even considered that. It seems so selfish of him now, that he was so wrapped up in his own problems and his own head that he hadn’t realised it wasn’t just him who was struggling. It should have been obvious, but he hadn’t even realised.

“Why?” he finds himself asking, his voice a little tight.

His mom looks at him for a moment and then sighs. She shuffles on a sofa, turning to face him more and pulling her hands into her lap. They’re holding each other, as though in comfort, and her eyes are sad again.

They often are, now days.

“You phoned me, that day you fell, do you remember?” she asks him quietly, wearing a frown he can’t quite read. He frowns too, both at her expression and the unexpected change in topic.

“Not really, I… I don’t think you answered?” His cautious statement comes out as a question mostly because he doesn’t understand where this conversation has come from or where it’s going, but he lets himself off this time. Tells himself the uncertainty is there because he really isn’t all that sure if his memories of that are real or not. They’re foggy and warped, unreliable at best.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t notice you’d called until afterwards, but, um, I guess you don’t remember but you left a voicemail.”

“I did?” Evan asks, confused. He doesn’t leave voicemails, as a rule, finds them too awkward. He prefers to hang up and send a text instead on the rare occasion he does call his mom.

“I don’t think you meant to,” his mom explains, grimacing, “but yeah, you did. You didn’t say anything, but I could just- I could hear you crying and I could tell you were in pain and I knew something had happened but when I phoned back you didn’t answer. And then I got the call from the hospital, and when I got there and found out you were so hurt and they didn’t know if you were going to pull through and I just- I just feel so guilty about it because maybe if I’d have picked up you’d have got help quicker and because… because you called me when you needed me and I wasn’t there for you. I was too busy, I’m always too busy-” she breaks off, sniffles a little, wipes at her eyes forcefully as though willing herself not to cry.

Evan’s chest aches and his throat feels tight, and he finds himself shuffling closer to her and putting his arms around her. She doesn’t resist, puts her arms around him too and pulls him into a hug. It’s warm and tight and honest, the sort of hug she gave when he was little and terrified she was about to leave him too.

“I’m okay,” she sighs wetly into his hair. “It just- this whole thing has put so much into perspective. Life’s fragile, you know? And we need to make the most of it while we can. I worked so much when you were little, missed so much of you growing up, and soon you’ll be off to college and, well,” she shrugs, sighs sadly, “If there’s just a few months when I can see you before you go, I want to take them.”

Evan takes a moment to digest that, that this break isn’t just for him, that she’s struggling too. it takes him a long while to wrap his head around the fact she wants to spend time with him just because.

“Are you sure?” he asks tentatively, frowning up at her. Her blue eyes are still a little damp, but they don’t look quite so sad anymore.

She nods in reply, her gaze not leaving his. “More than anything,” she tells him. 

He sighs wetly, nods in acceptance and leans his head into her shoulder. Half of him wants to argue, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

“I love you, mom,” he says instead, a small, tired smile growing on his lips when his mom’s arms shift a little, pulling him tighter into the hug.

“And I love you too, honey,” she replies as she always did when he was small, “All the way to the moon and back again.”

Evan goes back to school after the fall break. He’s anxious, fearing the likely questions about where he’s been the past few weeks and worried about seeing Jared and Alana and Zoe again, but he’s not so anxious he feels physically sick and his heart isn’t thrumming uncomfortably in his chest and his hands aren’t slick with sweat, so maybe his new meds are working at least a little. Maybe he’s starting to be a little less of a mess than he’d been before.

Jared is leaning almost casually against his locker when Evan gets there to deposit his books. He smiles a smile that looks a little forced as Evan approaches, and there’s an unexpected hesitancy to his voice when he says hey. Its weird between them, awkward almost, as though Jared just doesn’t know how to react around him anymore, but he isn’t rude, and he doesn’t make snide comments, and he doesn’t give Evan the cold shoulder like he had for a lot of the first few weeks of school, so that’s something. It’s progress. 

At lunch, just as Evan is eating his jelly sandwiches and Jared is explaining the plot of Zelda, Alana comes and sits at their lunch table, and from her bag, she pulls out a bulging silver pencil case. Evan blinks at, frowning a little as she tips it out and spreads a rainbow of pens over the tired grey plastic of the table.

“They’re to sign your cast,” she explains when he asks, and then with his permission, she proceeds to write her name over the bumpy white surface of the fibreglass with a vibrant purple sharpie. A little stunned but with his heart warmed and fluttering excitedly in his chest, Evan watches as she decorates. She draws for a while, and then writes something else, and Evan finds his throat a little tight when he reads what it is she’s written.

“Thanks,” he says quietly, and she nods and says, “it’s true,” and then offers the pens to Jared.

For a second, Evan thinks he might refuse, he did before, but then he puts down his chips, wipes his hands on the jeans and takes a pen from the table to write his own name. He draws a cactus beside it, and although it’s just a cactus, it isn’t anything explicit, there’s certainly something awfully suggestive about the shape of its branches.

Alana glares at it and then Jared when she sees it. 

Evan chokes on his juice which is probably for the best as he isn’t sure if he’d have laughed or cried if he wasn’t so busy coughing.

That evening as they’re having dinner, his mom asks if he’s had a good day, and for once, Evan doesn’t lie.

It hasn’t been a good day, exactly, it’s been a weird day, but it hasn’t been a bad day either, and he thinks that’s probably a start.

Zoe finds him on Thursday, or more waits beside his locker at the end of the day so he finds her when he goes to collect his jacket to go home. She asks to speak to him, a small sort of frown on her lips, and Evan nods because he thinks he probably owes her that and then tells Jared he’ll see him tomorrow.

It’s Zoe who starts the conversation, who awkwardly tells him Connor says ‘hi’, and then that he has asked her to pass over his email address. She doesn’t sound happy as she says it, as though maybe she doesn’t want Evan to have contact with Connor, as though maybe she doesn’t trust him with him, but she does hand over a torn slip of lined paper with a single email address scrawled across it in familiar spidery hand writing.

“Thanks,” Evan manages to say, his eyes still focused on the paper and his brow furrowed in a frown. “I’ll… thanks. And um- sorry. I‘m really sorry for what happened,” he adds, looking up to meet her gaze. “I should have said something.”

For a moment, Zoe just looks at him. “It wasn’t your fault,” she says eventually, her voice tight. “Our parents already knew he wasn’t well, even if they didn’t want to admit it. Besides, we would have lost him anyway if you hadn’t gotten involved, so…”

Evan grimaces, sighs a little. “I guess,” he acknowledges quietly, “But still. I should have said.”

A long second passes, and then Zoe nods. “Yeah, probably.”

There’s another almost uncomfortable silence, and then she excuses herself, says she’s got band practise to get to. She gives him a funny sort of wave as she leaves and tells him she’ll see him around. 

Evan watches her go, not quite knowing what to make of the paper in his hand or the conversation he’s just had.

He thinks about the email address as he walks home, considers it as he does his homework, and then makes a decision as he lays in bed that night. The next day, Evan types what he thinks is the most re-worded and re-written email he’s ever had to type.

Weeks pass, and although Evan lives in constant fear of things going back to the way they had been before, somehow, they don’t. His head stays a little straighter than it was, and although his therapy sessions are more than exhausting and his new meds make him feel a little nauseous and kind of spacey at times, the frequency of his panic attacks decrease, and he slowly stops wishing with as much conviction that he’d bled a little faster below that tree.

Things aren’t prefect; Jared is still weird and his mom is still busy with work and he still struggles to concentrate at school on the days when his brain just isn’t cooperating, but things are better than they were.

He wasn’t sure they ever could be after what happened. 

Evan’s surprised enough that he tells Connor about it in one of his emails, and when a reply comes back the next day, he finds Connor’s written that he’s glad, and that maybe things aren’t looking quite as bleak for him either.

Unexpectedly, Evan does see Zoe around at school, and not in the passing her by in the corridor sense.

It’s a Monday in the middle of October when Zoe comes up to him as he’s putting his books in his locker and tells him her parents have asked him to come for dinner.

“They want to meet you,” she explains, her brow furrowing a little, “They’ve been asking for a while now. You don’t have to come if it’s too weird but, I said I’d ask, so…” she trails off and shrugs, and Evan finds himself stuttering that it is weird and that he’ll have to think about it.

He does think about it, for a long while, long enough that he can email Connor about it and wait for a reply, but in the end agrees. It’s weird, so, so weird, but he thinks he probably owes it to them.

Zoe drives him to her house that Friday. It feels like a warped sort of déjà vu being back in the small blue car, and almost awkward. They don’t say much for a long while, and when Zoe breaks the silence, she goes in deep and asks Evan if it was Connor who found him in the forest that day.

“I just want to understand what happened,” she says, frowning out at the car ahead. “You weren’t friends, I know, but you were there together that day, weren’t you? It was him who saved your life.”

“Yeah, it was” Evan agrees quietly, heart in his throat, and then, after a long pause asks, “How did you know?”

“I didn’t know it was you, not for a long while, but I knew he’d saved someone at the park over the summer. He came home late for lunch that day, like, really late, and smelling of weed and dad went apeshit about it. Connor argued that it wasn’t his fault, said he’d been saving a kid in the forest, asked if dad wanted him to just leave people to die in the future. There was blood on his shirt so I knew he wasn’t lying but dad wouldn’t back down and-” she breaks off, shakes her head. “I asked him about it, later, and he wouldn’t tell me much, just that the kid was about our age, and that he’d fallen out of a tree and hurt himself pretty badly, so Connor had called an ambulance and stayed with him until it arrived.

“He seemed… upset about it, angry, kind of. Said he thought he’d failed, thought you’d died, but then, I don’t know, nothing seemed to come of it. I didn’t really think much more of it, but then he pushed you at school and you had a broken arm and that bruise on your forehead, and I don’t know, I just- I just wondered if it could have been you he found that day.”

It takes a second for something to click in Evan’s brain, but when it does, his eyes widen and his heart sinks a little. “That was why you had lunch with me that day,” he interrupts quietly, finally understanding that odd conversation they’d had below that tree at school.

Judging by Zoe’s flush, he’s hit the nail on the head. Despite her obvious guilt, she doesn’t apologise, says nothing for a moment, and just stares out the window. There’s still a thoughtful furrow between her brows when she slowly says, “So he saved your life, that’s how you knew him, but how did you know he wasn’t doing well? How did you know he want to try again?”

Evan sighs at the question. “Because he told me so, that day.”

Zoe looks over, frowning deeply. She looks suddenly pissed. “Why? That’s… why the fuck would he bring that up? Like, who the fuck talks about suicide to a kid they think is dying?”

Evan looks away, finds his eyes resting on his cast and the name in spidery blue lettering that decorates it as he considers Zoe’s question. Despite it being one he knows the answer to, it takes much longer than it should for him to tell her.

Dinner with the Murphys is weird. There’s no other way of putting it. He sits at the dining table of people he doesn’t know and pokes at inedible gluten free vegan lasagne whilst they thank him and question him about his friendship with their son. He doesn’t lie, but he does omit. He doesn’t tell them everything Connor told him, that isn’t his information to tell, and he doesn’t tell them everything about himself he told Zoe either, but he gives them the general story of Connor saving his life and then an overview of what happened in the park weeks later and explains that’s how he had an idea where Connor might be. It’s a safe story to tell, one he’s already agreed with Connor over email.

Mrs Call-me-Cynthia Murphy ends up crying, and Evan ends up feeling more nauseous than can be blamed on the lasagne alone, and in the end, Zoe takes him up to her room while Mr Murphy tries and fails to console his wife.

She signs his cast whilst they’re up there, just before he leaves, writes her name in sparkly violet pen. For a good few seconds afterwards, Evan just stares at the swirled letters surrounded by stars and music notes and the ‘get well soon’ written underneath.

Weeks pass, and there are still bad days, days when his heart thrums in his throat at thought of ordering pizza, days when he can’t answer the questions he’s asked in class, days when he just can’t summon the strength and motivation to get up and dressed because it all feels so hopeless and bleak, but they get fewer and further in between over time.

One Wednesday towards the end of October, Alana come up to him in the corridor and says she’s thinking of starting a project with the aim of helping teen mental health. It’s going to be called Found, she tells him, and it’s going to focus on showing people that they’re not alone even when they think they are and that things can always get better even when the seems like they never could. Evan isn’t expecting her to ask for his help, but she does, asks him if he wants to run it with her, and he tries to turn her down, explains he isn’t good at social media or giving speeches, but she says that doesn’t matter, and that she’ll send him her address so he can come over at the weekend and see what she’s done so far.

Evan does go to her modest house at the edge of town at the weekend and although he refuses to let her involve his name in any way because he isn’t ready for the world to know of his struggles just yet, he does agree to help her out with the work behind the scenes. It’s a worthy cause, and Connor seems to think so too when Evan tells him about it over email. 

It’s weird, emailing someone, Evan thinks, old fashioned, but Connor doesn’t have a phone where he is, so emails sent in his half hour slot of computer time is the best they have. They send them every day, messages going back and forth and back and forth, until one day, on a day in the middle of November, they stop.

“Hey, you’re finally free.”

Evan’s laying on his bed when the unexpected yet entirely familiar voice interrupts his spiralling, and he startles violently enough that he very nearly drops the Rubik’s Cube he’s solving on his face. It wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened, not even the second, but he supposes that just a hazard that comes with solving it whilst laying on his back.

Trying not to look like his heart is racing, he sits up, crosses his legs, and forces a smile at the tall, darkly dressed form of Connor Murphy lingering a little awkwardly in his bedroom doorway. There’s a strange expression on his face, a little confused, a little apologetic, and Evan knows it’s because he feels bad for making him jump. It really wasn’t his fault though, Evan’s a jumpy person, and he’d apparently been lost in his head enough as he lay there that he hadn’t heard the footsteps as he’d approached or the doorbell he assumed had been rung.

He's not surprised by that, really, he’s been lost in his head pretty much all afternoon, stuck with just his eddying thoughts for company until Connor arrived and started him from his head with a comment about his arm.

Which, yeah, Evan’s very aware it’s finally free.

He forces himself to smile like any sane person would as he holds up his left hand and wiggles his fingers indicatively. Well, not that he’s actually proving anything by wiggling his fingers since they hadn’t been hindered by the fibreglass, but that isn’t really the point. For the first time in months, there’s no cast below his fingers, just the pale skin of his palm and then a weirdly thin wrist that disappears into the sleeve of his sweatshirt. Evan should be pleased to have it gone, he knows he should be, but somehow, he doesn’t think he is.

It’s more convenient, sure, he’d thoroughly enjoyed being able to shower without having to wrap his arm in clingfilm first, and it was nice to be back to having a second somewhat functioning hand to wash his hair with, and he hadn’t had the rigmarole of having to remove the plastic afterwards either, but it also feels very, very weird not to have it there. It feels unnatural almost in a way he really hadn’t expected it to, leaves him feeling lop-sided, unbalanced almost, as though his body has grown accustomed to having one arm heavier than the other and his sense of balance has shifted to accommodate it.

His mental sense of balance has been thrown by having it removed too, it seems, and it doesn’t just come from having the reminder to hold on and the friendships he now has written on his arm. 

“Haha, yeah, finally,” he agrees because he knows that’s what Connor expects him to say and then drops his arm to his lap and very quickly adds, “So, um, how was- how was therapy?” before anything more can be asked about the matter.

Connor gives him a look, one that makes him look a little confused and a little concerned, and Evan fights the urge to turn away. He doesn’t though, holds Connor’s gaze, watches as he leaves that line of questioning and grimaces and shrugs a little instead. “Kinda shit?” he admits with a surprising amount of honesty as he wanders into the room, “But, like, when isn’t it?”

Evan has to admit, he has a point there. He can’t speak for Connor, or for anyone else for that matter, but his own experience with therapy had taught him very quickly that even the sessions that are productive and helpful are still not great. They’re exhausting and often kind of painful and leave him feeling raw and battered and exposed.

He doesn’t think that’s quite what Connor is referring to this time though, Evan’s seen him post therapy a good few times now, and although he normally seems exhausted and thoughtful, he doesn’t normally seem quite so on edge.

“What happened?”

Connor grimaces, shrugs a little, and then turns away and wanders over to the window.

“Nothing, like, major,” he admits, sighing in a frustrated sort of way, “Dad was just, dad, you know, and then Zoe was pissed that mom wanted to take me to therapy rather than her shopping, and then David just… he kept pressing and then I threw a cushion at him. Like, hard.”

Despite himself, Evan finds a tired smirk on his lips at that. “You threw a cushion at your therapist?”

“Yeah, well, I mean, I guess it could have been worse, could have thrown the chair or something, but it still wasn’t great. Knocked over his coffee. He wasn’t, like, thrilled.” He pauses, scoffs a laugh. “That’s what you get for working with kids with anger issues though, isn’t it?”

Evan doesn’t join his laughter, just watches his back for a moment before replying.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” he comforts, eventually, adding, “Seriously, Connor, you really are, I don’t think you can see how much better you’re doing,” at the quiet disbelieving exhale he’d received in reply. He kind of wants to say more, to find something else uplifting to help Connor from his slump, but since he doesn’t think there’s much he could say even if he could focus his distracted brain enough to find the words, he doesn’t.

“What happened with your dad?” he asks instead, hoping to get Connor talking because although Evan still doesn’t know all that much about Connor, he knows he doesn’t do well with his bottled up feelings. They sit and stew, turn dark and angry until they either drag him down or explode violently outwards.

There’s a bit of a pause before Connor sighs, and turns, and starts to explain why his morning had got him tense enough that a few badly timed questions had had him hurling soft furnishings at his therapist.

Although the words start slow, they quicken as Connor finds his stride, lets out his feelings as he paces back and forth before the window.

Connor rants a little, talks about his parents and morning and his therapy session, and Evan tries very hard to listen to what is being said despite his own eddying thoughts. He’s the one who started Connor talking, so he should be listening, and even if he wasn’t, even if Connor had started the conversation by himself, he should still be listening. It’s important because Connor is important and Connor’s feelings are important, but he finds himself struggling to pay all that much attention all the same. He can’t concentrate, can’t even think straight.

His brain is much too busy frying itself in a way it hasn’t for a while now.

Which is actually a good sign, in a way, he guesses, because there had been a time not too long ago when this had been his near permanent state of mind, when he’d always been too distracted by what was going on inside his head and the mess he’d made of so many things to even try to look like he was paying all that much attention to the outside world. He is doing better now, he knows so. The progress has been slow and small, but it’s been there.

It’s been there for Connor too, even he can see that. He seems a little calmer, a little less angry at the world, and he’s starting to get the impression that tensions in the Murphy household aren’t running quite as high as they had been before. Much to everyone’s relief, he’s started to actually attend school, too, although a part of Evan is half convinced that’s only because Connor wants to drive him there in the morning. He isn’t complaining, he likes their car journeys, and he likes having someone to sit with at lunch and breaks, and if Connor’s actually staying at school and going to class, well, maybe it doesn’t matter so much what his motivation is.

Overall, things are slowly getting better for both of them, but Evan knows just as much as Connor does that recovery isn’t linear.

There are good day, yes, more and more of them as time passes, but the bad days still happen too.

For Evan, today is one of those days.

“Evan?”

Evan looks up from his cube to find Connor staring at him with a frown on his lips. He doesn’t look angry at the fact Evan clearly hadn’t been listening to a word he’d said, just maybe a little hurt.

“Sorry, I- I um, w-what were you saying?” he stutters awkwardly, not sure if Connor has asked him a question or if he’d just noticed Evan’s attentions was somewhere entirely different.

Connor huffs. “It wasn’t important.” His tone makes it sound like he can’t quite work out if he’s hurt Evan wasn’t listening or just aware what he was saying wasn’t worth listening to anyway. 

Evan shakes his head a little. “T-that’s not true. E-everything you say is important.”

Connor looks at him for a moment, and then his expression softens a little.

“No, it really wasn’t. I was just venting.” There’s a pause and then, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Evan replies, trying not to speak too quickly or too slowly because he’s very aware that either would make his ‘nothing’ worthless.

Connor frowns at him, tilts his head to the side. “You’re acting weird.”

“I’m always weird.” He looks up to catch Connor’s gaze and tries to smile. “I’m like, king of weirdness, o-or maybe not the king because I’m n-not exactly king material, maybe like, the jester of weirdness? l-like someone who’s weird even in weirdland, someone who-”

“Can you actually solve that?” Connor asks suddenly, cutting off his stuttering, and it takes Evan a good few seconds to realise what it is he’s referring to. It’s actually a pretty good distraction method, he’ll give Connor that.

“Oh, yeah,” he says breathlessly, self-consciously putting the Rubik’s cube he’s been restlessly, forcefully fiddling with back on his bedside table and subtly rolling out his achy, recently uncasted wrist. The muscles pull a little, weak and stiff after months of disuse and complaining the force of his relentless fiddling.

As soon as the cube is down he wants it back, though, wants an outlet for the anxious, pent up energy that tingles in his bones.

“That’s pretty cool,” Connor tells him, sounding impressed beneath the caution in his tone.

Evan coughs a laugh. He can’t quite work out if Connor is being serious or not, if he even cares or if he’s just trying to keep Evan talking. “N-no, it isn’t,” he protests, “But Jared used to like muddling it up again every time he came around a-and I- I never used to like it being muddled, s-so I learnt to solve it.”

“Nah, it is cool, I’ve never seen anyone else solve one before.”

“Y-you haven’t seen me solve one either,” Evan points out, “a-and it’s um- it’s not as hard as it seems, there’s a few- a few algorithms to remember, you c-can’t just solve th-them.”

Connor doesn’t reply for a long second, just crosses the room and sits down on the bed. “Evan, what’s wrong?”

“N-nothing!”

Beside him, Connor pointedly raises an eyebrow, and Evan curses that his mental state is in some cases so easy to judge. He stutters, has since he was a kid, and while it isn’t normally too much of a problem, as soon as his head gets bad, his tongue gets bad too. He wishes it didn’t, but that isn’t how it works. 

“Hansen?”

Evan sighs, grimaces. “Look, r-really, it is nothing important, it’s stupid.”

“Nothing’s stupid if it’s upsetting you. Besides, I just spent the past ten minutes venting to you, so I think you’ve earned a minute or two of my time.”

“It wasn’t like I was listening.”

Connor laughs. “Fucking hell you’re argumentative today,” he says, and Evan can’t help the small smile that flickers across his lips for the briefest of milliseconds before it’s gone like dust in the wind and he resumes biting at his lip. Connor’s smile fades too, Evan can tell without even looking up.

Silence falls, Connor waiting. It doesn’t take long for Evan to crack.

“Look, it’s just, it’s really scarred, okay,” he rushes, when it becomes clear Connor isn’t going to fill the silence that has formed. “A-and I hadn’t realised it would be which was, like, really fucking stupid.”

Connor’s frown morphs to one of confusion. “Your arm?” he asks uncertainly, his brow still furrowed.

“Yeah,” Evan sighs harshly, and then after a moment’s hesitation, pushes up his sleeve. He doesn’t look at the skin below. Doesn’t want to. Doesn’t need to. He knows what’s there. Connor does look though, his concerned eyes flitting between Evan’s arm and his expression a couple of times before they slow and skim over the long, pink line left by surgery and the series of holes from the temporary metal fixing that had surrounded his arm when he’d first woken up in the hospital. His mismatched eyes linger on the messiest of the three types of marks for longer than the others. It’s the only one he’s seen before, Evan realises, possibly the only one he knew existed.

They’ve discussed what happened in the forest a few times before, but Evan doesn’t think he’s ever been into detail about what happened afterwards. He doesn’t think Connor knew about the surgery; knows even now he probably doesn’t understand the lines of circular pin holes along the unnaturally pale skin.

Not that it really matters, the exact reason for the holes. It’s that they’re there is the problem.

That and the look in Connor’s eyes as he takes in the marks.

He can’t quite read it, can’t understand the mix of emotions there, doesn’t know what Connor’s thinking.

He wonders what Connor thinks of him for being so upset seemingly about the appearance of his arm, especially when Connor’s arms aren’t much better beneath his dark sleeves.

The scars are smaller there, neater and paler, but they’re more numerous, too, and their positioning much more obvious in their causes intention than his own. 

“It’s not, I’m not being vain, I-I don’t care about how they look,” Evan spouts out of nowhere, suddenly desperate to explain to Connor the reasoning for his upset, “I just- I hate that they’re there. I don’t want them there.”

Connor looks at him for a long, long second, his mismatched eyes sad and thoughtful, then he nods.

“They’ll fade, you know,” he tells him gently, as though he still thinks it’s their appearance that’s the problem. And well, it kind of is, but not in the way most people would assume. He wouldn’t care that they’re there normally, wouldn’t care if his arm was such a mess because he actually fell from that tree.

Suddenly angry, Evan’s eyes flash. “That’s not the point!” he snaps, drawing his arm back.

Connor does well not to flinch. “I know it isn’t,” he agrees calmly, softly. There’s understanding in his tone.

Of course there is.

Evan sighs, sad and tired and embarrassed at his outburst, and looks away.

The feeling of a hand on his own draws his eyes back from the thin carpet. Connor’s grip is gentle as he pulls Evan’s arm back, careful as though maybe he’s scared of hurting him, worried about breaking his arm again, and weak enough that Evan could very easily pull himself free if he wanted to. He doesn’t though, lets Connor take his arm and look at it for a moment, his thumb tracing the air above the scarred skin before his head lifts again.

There’s a questioning look his eyes when they rise to meet Evan’s, one that’s uncertain and hesitant like his thumb as it hovers. He’s asking for permission. Evan hesitates for the shortest of moments before he swallows his fear and nods.

Neither of them say anything as Connor’s thumb ghosts over the messiest of the marks before gently touching.

Evan tries not to flinch at the contact, manages to not pull away, or rip his arm from Connor’s grasp and hide it where no one will be able to see it again, but there’s still a tensing of his muscles and the tiniest of jolts of his elbow as he fights the urge. The contact makes him feel a little sick too, and he wonders if Connor’s stomach is stirring equally in repulsion.

“They’ll heal, Evan. _You’ll_ heal,” he insists, expression calm and decidedly non-nauseous, “you’re getting better, right?” 

Evan shakes his head at the concept, looks down at his bed sheets to avoid catching sight of both Connor and his arm. “But they’ll still be there. They’re always going to be there.”

A moment passes before Connor speaks. “Yeah, they are,” he agrees softly, tone candid. “And you can’t change that, just like you can’t change what happened that day, but, Evan-” he pauses, waits for Evan to look up- “that’s okay.”

Evan shakes his head again, sniffles a little. His throat burns with tears he’s refusing to shed.

He doesn’t often disagree with Connor, but today he does. Connor may be fine with his own scars, doesn’t seem to care about the obvious marks left on his arms, but Evan isn’t. Not for himself. He isn’t okay with what he tried to do, isn’t okay that what happened happened, doesn’t want have the reminder of how broken he once was permanently embellished on his arm in scar tissue.

“Bones can heal stronger than they were before they broke.”

Evan pulls himself from his thoughts, frowns at his bedding in momentary confusion. When he looks up, he finds Connor eyeing the casts sitting on his desk with interest, his head tilted to the side to match Alana’s purple handwriting decorating the newer of his two casts as he reads. 

Evan looks at the cast too, at the pair of them sitting side by side on his desk courtesy of his mom. Despite the plain white fibreglass, the newer looks vibrant with sharpie beside its older counterpart. Warmer, maybe. Happier.

Certainty from a better time than the one before with its scrawled name and bloodstained cuff.

“Is that true?” Connor asks, eyes flitting from the writing back to Evan

Evan shrugs, tries not to scoff. It’s not that he doubts Alana’s fact, he knows it to be true, but well, he doubts himself.

It there’s about who can be broken enough that their bones don’t heal right, it’d be him.

“Apparently,” he confirms, when it becomes clear that Connor’s waiting for an answer.

Not that Connor replies to his confirmation, just tilts his head again, this time in consideration, and then asks, “Why do you think she wrote it?”

Evan does scoff this time, frowns at Connor’s stupid question. “Because I had a broken arm?”

He doesn’t see Connor roll his eyes.

“Well, yeah, that’s some of it, but I don’t think it’s just that. That’s too straight forward for Alana.” There’s a silence, and then, thoughtfully, “Maybe it’s not just bones she was talking about.”

“What?” Evan asks, tiredly.

“Well, maybe…” Connor pauses, grimaces, looks as though he’s trying to work out how to word whatever it is he wants to say. “Maybe people do, too. In a way.”

Evan looks up to find Connor’s eyes suddenly a little wider than usual.

“I’m not saying you’re broken, Ev, but… but maybe… You’ve been through a lot, this year, these past few months, more than anyone should have to go through, and I know you’re struggling with that now, and I think Alana knows you’re struggling with it too, and maybe what she was saying was that even though things aren’t great right now, you’ll come out of it the other side stronger than you were before. Like a broken bone, it might take time, to heal, to grow, and you’ll need support, like your arm needed the cast, and there will be scars, reminders of what happened, but eventually you’ll get there. You’ll heal, just like your arm has.”

Evan huffs, looks away, frowns at his still sore arm, then the cast, at the writing that apparently might be more of a metaphor than he had thought before. Connor seems sure it isn’t, anyway, seems sure in what he’s saying too. Seems sure that Evan can heal from an event he can’t even really accept has happened. Connor has more belief in Evan than Evan thinks he ever will.

It’s nice, comforting, that Connor believes in him even when he can’t believe in himself.

He would like for Connor to be right, both in his analysis of those words on his cast and his belief in them, he’d like to know he’ll be okay eventually, stronger, maybe but he just isn’t sure he’s right.

He does know one thing for sure, though, he realises as he sits there. One thing that he didn’t before but is really quite important.

“Do you remember when I told you the doctors said I was lucky that you were there that day, and you asked if I thought I was?”

Connor frowns beside him, at the change in topic, at the question, Evan doesn’t know. It takes him a second to reply, and when he does, his voice is quiet and soft.

“You didn’t reply.”

Evan nods in agreement. “B-because I didn’t know if I thought was lucky or not,” he confirms, “I didn’t- I’m not sure what I wanted, either for it never to have happened, or for me… not to have been s-so lucky, I guess. But- um, but I do now, I think... Think I was lucky. I- I’m not sure I can accept what I tried to do, not soon anyway, b-but I can accept that I was lucky you were there to save me. And that I’m lucky to be alive, and um- I’m- I’m glad. That I am.” He takes a breath, looks up at Connor through his lashes to find him watching quietly. A smile, small but genuine grows on his lips.

Evan licks his own. Finds the courage to continue.

“I-I was lucky you were there that day,” he adds, still soft a little shaky, but surer that before, “Not just because I would have died if you weren’t because you literally saved my life, but because we wouldn’t have really met if you hadn’t been. We… we probably wouldn’t be friends if I hadn’t tried. I’m glad you were there to save me, and I’m pleased it was you that did. I’m pleased we met, even though the reason why sucked.”

He lets out wet sort of half laugh, half sigh at the understatement and then swallows, looks up to find Connor watching back. His expression is almost serious despite the small, sad smile still playing on his lips.

“I’m so, so glad I was there that day, too, Evan,” he says sincerely, his mismatches eyes bright and honest and focused on Evan. “And I’m glad that you were there to save me, too.” He pauses, grimaces. “Both time, actually.”

Evan nods, swallows, says, “So am I,” and means it more than he’s ever meant anything else before. He’s more certain about that statement than he’s ever been about anything, dreads to think what would have happened if he hadn’t been more than anything.

His throat tightens thinking about it, about what would have happened if Connor hadn’t been there that day, if he’d walked a different path. Evan remembers the rattling of the medicine tub in Connor’s pockets and knows for sure it wouldn’t just have been him that died in the forest that day.

He isn’t sure if his expression is just as readable nowadays as an open book or if its just that Connor can read him better than anyone else, or if maybe he just understands the situation, but suddenly, a thin arm wraps itself around him. It pulls him close.

“Hey, we’ll get through this, okay?” Connor says, his words soft, gentle, vibrating against Evan’s skull where their heads rest against each other. “Things will be okay again one day. Maybe not for a while, but eventually.”

“Do you actually believe that?” Evan finds himself asking. “Like, honestly?”

“I think so?” Connor replies eventually. “I didn’t. Not or a while. For years I just though this was it, life was shit and it was always going to be shit. I thought my family hated me, and I knew they had good reason to. I was awful to them, I did awful things. I was just so angry all the time. At them, at myself, at the whole fucking world. I made them miserable, made everyone miserable, and I was miserable myself and didn’t think that was going to change, so…” He breaks off, shrugs pointedly. “But, I don’t know, now? Now I think it could be. I think it’ll take time, like shit loads of time, but I can how things could be okay one day. I have hope, you know?” There’s a pause and then he laughs. “Fuck, that’s weird saying that.”

“You’ve changed,” Evan reports, briefly smiling weakly against the pointy shoulder his head rests against before his eyes widen in alarm. “N-not in a bad way, though. Like in a good way, definitely. Definitely a good way, like-.”

“Hansen,” Connor interrupts softly, good natured warning thick in his tone.

Evan’s cheeks heat. “Sorry.” He looks up to find Connor rolling his eyes. They catch his moment’s later, hold them as amusement fades back to thoughtfulness.

“You have changed too, you know?” he says, “You’ve got so much better even if you can’t always see it, and I know you’re not where you want to be just yet, and I’m not either, but you’ll get there. We’ll get there. Maybe not even soon, but one day, we will.”

Evan hums softly, not quite agreeing, but not disagreeing entirely either. He isn’t all that hopeful, doesn’t quite trust himself to get better in the way Connor thinks he can, but he’s hopeful that one day he might be hopeful, that one day he might be able to see the light at the end of this tunnel. He’d like that, like there to be a time in the future where all that has happened feels like it happened a very long time ago, that it doesn’t matter anymore. That it doesn’t feel like it defines him the way it does now.

Tired, he leans into the warmth of Connor’s hug a little more, sighs softly into the still air of his room. Instantly, Connor’s hand shifts, slides down his arm, rubs over the exposed skin just below his elbow. His thumb clips scar tissue and instinctively Evan stiffens, his posture tensing and his lungs tightening, but Connor… Connor doesn’t shift. Connor clearly doesn’t care about the puckered skin or the meaning behind it, and after a second, Evan finds himself relaxing back into the embrace. 

The hand around him tightens briefly in acknowledgment, a thanks to his acceptance of the gesture, and Evan doesn’t even need to look up to know that the edges of Connor’s lips are pulled up in contentment.

With a small smile on his own lips, Evan sighs again and lifts his gaze to look out the window, at the sky and the setting sun behind the small tree in his garden. He used to climb it when he was little, spent countless hours amongst its branches before he found bigger and better trees to climb. Trees like the one in the park he had sat under with Connor, and then the one at Ellison he had found a few years back.

Evan doesn’t want to climb any of them now, doesn’t think he’d be able either mentally or physically, but he hopes that one day he might be. That he might eventually heal enough to find that piece of himself he lost that day. He hopes he does, hopes one day he’ll have the strength to go back to the tallest tree in Ellison state park and pull himself into the branches he had ones been comfortable amongst.

And later that year, in early June, with Connor at his side and their hands entwined, he does.


End file.
